_A gripping, thrilling, uncanny tale about the frightful
fate that befell a yachting party on the dreadful island of
living dead men_
* * * * *
_1. A Horror from the Past_
A drab gray sheet of cloud slipped stealthily from the moon's round
face, like a shroud slipping from the face of one long dead, a coldly
phosphorescent face from which the eyes had been plucked. Yellow
radiance fell toward a calm, oily sea, seeking a narrow bank of fog
lying low on the water, penetrating its somber mass like frozen yellow
fingers.
Vilma Bradley shuddered and shrank against Clifford Darrell's brawny
form. "It's--it's ghastly, Cliff!" she said.
"Ghastly?" Darrell leaned against the rail, laughing softly. "One
cocktail too many--that's the answer. It's given you the jitters.
Listen!" Faintly from the salon came strains of dance music and the
rhythmic shuffle of feet. "A nifty yacht, a South Sea moon, a radio
dance orchestra, dancers--and little Clifford! And you call it
ghastly!" Almost savagely his arms tightened about her, and the
bantering note left his voice. "I'm crazy about you, Vilma."
She tried to laugh, but it was an unconvincing sound. "It's the moon,
Cliff--I guess. I never saw it like that before. Something's going to
happen--something dreadful. I just _know_ it!"
"Oh--be sensible, Vilma!" There was a hint of impatience in Cliff's
deep voice. A gorgeous girl in his arms--dark-haired, dark-eyed, made
for love--and she talked of dreadful things which were going to happen
because the moon looked screwy.
She released herself and glanced out over the sea. "I know I'm silly,
but----" Her voice froze and her slender body stiffened.
"Cliff--look!"
Darrell spun around, and as he stared, he felt a dryness seeping into
his throat, choking him....
Out of the winding-sheet of fog into the moonlight crept a strange,
strange craft, her crumbling timbers blackened and rotted with
incredible age. The corpse of a ship, she seemed, resurrected from the
grave of the sea. Her prow thrust upward like a scimitar bent
backward, hovering over the gaunt ruin of a cabin whose seaward sides
were formed by port and starboard bows. From a shallow pit amidships
jutted the broken arm of a mast, its splintered tip pointing toward
the blindly watching moon. The stern, thickly covered with the
moldering encrustations of age, curved inward above the strange high
poop, beneath which lay another cabin. And along either side of her
worm-eaten freeboard ran a row of apertures like oblong portholes. Out
of these projected great oars, long, unwieldy, as somberly black as
the rest of the ancient hulk.
Now a sound drifted across the waters, the steady, rhythmic
_br-rr-oom, br-rr-oom, br-rr-oom_ of a drum beating time for the
rowers. Its hollow thud checked the heart, set it to throbbing in
tempo with its own weary pulse. Ghostly fingers, dripping dread,
crawled up Darrell's spine.