CHAPTER VI

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ASTOUNDING

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VOL. II, No. 3 CONTENTS JUNE, 1930

COVER DESIGN H. W. WESSOLOWSKI

_Painted in Water-colors from a Scene in "The Moon Master."_

OUT OF THE DREADFUL DEPTHS C. D. WILLARD 293

_Robert Thorpe Seeks Out the Nameless Horror That Is Sucking All Human

Life Out of Ships in the South Pacific._

MURDER MADNESS MURRAY LEINSTER 310

_Bell, of the Secret "Trade," Strikes into the South American Jungle to

Find the Hidden Stronghold of the Master--the Unknown Monster Whose

Diabolical Poison Swiftly and Surely Is Enslaving the Whole

Continent._ (Part Two of a Continued Novel.)

THE CAVERN WORLD JAMES P. OLSEN 340

_A Great Oil Field Had Gone Dry--and Asher, Trapped Far under the Earth

Among the Revolting Petrolia, Learns Why._

BRIGANDS OF THE MOON RAY CUMMINGS 352

_The Besieged Earth-men Wage Grim, Ultra-scientific War with Martian

Bandits in a Last Great Struggle for Their Radium-ore--and Their

Lives._ (Conclusion.)

GIANTS OF THE RAY TOM CURRY 368

_Madly the Three Raced for their Lives up the Shaft of the Radium Mine,

for Behind Them Poured a Stream of Hideous Monsters--Giants of the

Ray!_

THE MOON MASTER CHARLES W. DIFFIN 384

_Through Infinite Deeps of Space Jerry Foster Hurtles to the Moon--Only

to be Trapped by a Barbaric Race and Offered as a Living Sacrifice to

Oong, their Loathsome, Hypnotic God._ (A Complete Novel.)

THE READERS' CORNER ALL OF US 421

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Issued monthly by Publishers' Fiscal Corporation, 80 Lafayette St.,

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Entered as second-class matter December 7, 1929, at the Post Office at

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Out of the Dreadful Depths

_By C. D. Willard_

[Illustration: "_Help--help--the eyes--the eyes!_"]

[Sidenote: Robert Thorpe seeks out the nameless horror that is sucking

all human life out of ships in the South Pacific.]

Robert Thorpe reached languidly for a cigarette and, with lazy

fingers, extracted a lighter from his pocket.

"Be a sport," he repeated to the gray haired man across the table. "Be

a sport, Admiral, and send me across on a destroyer. Never been on a

destroyer except in port. It ... would be a new experience ... enjoy

it a lot...."

In the palm-shaded veranda of this club-house in Manila, Admiral

Struthers, U. S. N., regarded with undisguised disfavor the young man

in the wicker chair. He looked at the deep chest and the broad

shoulders which even a loose white coat could not conceal, at the

short, wavy brown hair and the slow, friendly smile on the face below.

A likable chap, this Thorpe, but lazy--just an idler--he had

concluded. Been playing around Manila for the last two months--resting

up, he had said. And from what? the Admiral had questioned

disdainfully. Admiral Struthers did not like indolent young men, but

it would have saved him money if he had really got an answer to his

question and had learned just why and how Robert Thorpe had earned a

vacation.

"You on a destroyer!" he said, and the lips beneath the close-cut gray

mustache twisted into a smile. "That would be too rough an experience

for you, I am afraid, Thorpe. Destroyers pitch about quite a bit, you

know."

He included in his smile the destroyer captain and the young lady who

completed their party. The young lady had a charming and saucy smile

and knew it; she used it in reply to the Admiral's remark.

"I have asked Mr. Thorpe to go on the _Adelaide_," she said. "We shall

be leaving in another month--but Robert tells me he has other plans."

"Worse and worse," was the Admiral's comment. "Your father's yacht is

not even as steady as a destroyer. Now I would suggest a nice

comfortable liner...."

* * * * *

Robert Thorpe did not miss the official glances of amusement, but his

calm complacence was unruffled. "No," he said, "I don't just fancy

liners. Fact is, I have been thinking of sailing across to the States

alone."

The Admiral's smile increased to a short laugh. "I would make a bet

you wouldn't get fifty miles from Manila harbor."

The younger man crushed his cigarette slowly into the tray. "How much

of a bet?" he asked. "What will you bet that I don't sail alone from

here to--where are you stationed?--San Diego?--from here to San

Diego?"

"Humph!" was the snorted reply. "I would bet a thousand dollars on

that and take your money for Miss Allaire's pet charity."

"Now that's an idea," said Thorpe. He reached for a check book in his

inner pocket and began to write.

"In case I lose," he explained, "I might be hard to find, so I will

just ask Miss Allaire to hold this check for me. You can do the same."

He handed the check to the girl.

"Winner gets his thousand back, Ruth; loser's money goes to any little

orphans you happen to fancy."

"You're not serious," protested the Admiral.

"Sure! The bank will take that check seriously, I promise you. And I

saw just the sloop I want for the trip ... had my eye on her for the

past month."

"But, Robert," began Ruth Allaire, "you don't mean to risk your life

on a foolish bet?"

Thorpe reached over to pat tenderly the hand that held his check. "I'm

glad if you care," he said, and there was an undertone of seriousness

beneath his raillery, "but save your sympathy for the Admiral. The U.

S. Navy can't bluff me." He rose more briskly from his chair.

"Thorpe...." said Admiral Struthers. He was thinking deeply, trying to

recollect. "Robert Thorpe.... I have a book by someone of that

name--travel and adventure and knocking about the world. Young man,

are you _the_ Robert Thorpe?"

"Why, yes, if you wish to put it that way," agreed the other. He waved

lightly to the girl as he moved away.

"I must be running along," he said, "and get that boat. See you all in

San Diego!"

* * * * *

The first rays of the sun touched with golden fingers the tops of the

lazy swells of the Pacific. Here and there a wave broke to spray under

the steady wind and became a shower of molten metal. And in the boat,

whose sails caught now and then the touch of morning, Robert Thorpe

stirred himself and rose sleepily to his feet.

Out of the snug cabin at this first hint of day, he looked first at

the compass and checked his course, then made sure of the lashing

about the helm. The steady trade-winds had borne him on through the

night, and he nodded with satisfaction as he prepared to lower his

lights. He was reaching for a line as the little craft hung for an

instant on the top of a wave. And in that instant his eyes caught a

marking of white on the dim waters ahead.

"Breakers!" he shouted aloud and leaped for the lashed wheel. He

swung off to leeward and eased a bit on the main-sheet, then lashed

the wheel again to hold on the new course.

Again from a wave-crest he stared from under a sheltering hand. The

breakers were there--the smooth swells were foaming--breaking in

mid-ocean where his chart, he knew, showed water a mile deep. Beyond

the white line was a three-master, her sails shivering in the breeze.

The big sailing ship swung off on a new tack as he watched. Was she

dodging those breakers? he wondered. Then he stared in amazement

through the growing light at the unbroken swells where the white line

had been.

* * * * *

He rubbed his sleepy eyes with a savage hand and stared again. There

were no breakers--the sea was an even expanse of heaving water.

"I could swear I saw them!" he told himself, but forgot this

perplexing occurrence in the still more perplexing maneuvers of the

sailing ship.

This steady wind--for smooth handling--was all that such a craft could

ask, yet here was this old-timer of the sea with a full spread of

canvas booming and cracking as the ship jibed. She rolled far over as

he watched, recovered, and tore off on a long, sweeping circle.

The one man crew of the little sloop should have been preparing

breakfast, as he had for many mornings past, but, instead he swung his

little craft into the wind and watched for near an hour the erratic

rushes and shivering haltings of the larger ship. But long before this

time had passed Thorpe knew he was observing the aimless maneuvers of

an unmanned vessel.

And he watched his chance for a closer inspection.

* * * * *

The three-master _Minnie R._, from the dingy painting of the stern,

hung quivering in the wind when he boarded her. There was a broken

log-line that swept down from the stern, and he caught this and made

his own boat fast. Then, watching his chance, he drew close and went

overboard, the line in his hand.

"Like a blooming native after cocoanuts," he told himself as he went

up the side. But he made it and pulled himself over the rail as the

ship drew off on another tack.

Thorpe looked quickly about the deserted deck. "Ahoy, there!" he

shouted, but the straining of rope and spars was his only answer.

Canvas was whipping to ribbons, sheets cracked their frayed ends like

lashes as the booms swung wildly, but a few sails still held and

caught the air.

He was on the after deck, and he leaped first for the wheel that was

kicking and whirling with the swing of the rudder. A glance at the

canvas that still drew, and he set her on a course with a few

steadying pulls. There was rope lying about, and he lashed the wheel

with a quick turn or two and watched the ship steady down to a smooth

slicing of the waves from the west.

And only then did the man take time to quiet his panting breath and

look about him in the unnatural quiet of this strangely deserted deck.

He shouted again and walked to a companionway to repeat the hail. Only

an echo, sounding hollowly from below, replied to break the vast

silence.

* * * * *

It was puzzling--inconceivable. Thorpe looked about him to note the

lifeboats snug and undisturbed in their places. No sign there of an

abandonment of the boat, but abandoned she was, as the silence told

only too plainly. And Thorpe, as he went below, had an uncanny feeling

of the crew's presence--as if they had been there, walked where he

walked, shouted and laughed a matter of a brief hour or two before.

The door of the captain's cabin was burst in, hanging drunkenly from

one hinge. The log-book was open; there were papers on a rude desk.

The bunk was empty where the blankets had been thrown hurriedly

aside. Thorpe could almost see the skipper of this mystery ship

leaping frantically from his bed at some sudden call or commotion. A

chair was smashed and broken, and the man who examined it curiously

wiped from his hands a disgusting slime that was smeared stickily on

the splintered fragments. There was a fetid stench within his

nostrils, and he passed up further examination of this room.

Forward in the fo'c'sle he felt again irresistibly the recent presence

of the crew. And again he found silence and emptiness and a disorder

that told of a fear-stricken flight. The odor that sickened and

nauseated the exploring man was everywhere. He was glad to gain the

freedom of the wind-swept deck and rid his lungs of the vile breath

within the vessel.

He stood silent and bewildered. There was not a living soul aboard the

ship--no sign of life. He started suddenly. A moaning, whimpering cry

came from forward on the deck!

Thorpe leaped across a disorder of tangled rope to race toward the

bow. He stopped short at sight of a battered cage. Again the moaning

came to him--there was something that still lived on board the

ill-fated ship.

* * * * *

He drew closer to see a great, huddled, furry mass that crouched and

cowered in a corner of the cage. A huge ape, Thorpe concluded, and it

moaned and whimpered absurdly like a human in abject fear.

Had this been the terror that drove the men into the sea? Had this ape

escaped and menaced the officers and crew? Thorpe dismissed the

thought he well knew was absurd. The stout wood bars of the cage were

broken. It had been partially crushed, and the chain that held it to

the deck was extended to its full length.

"Too much for me," the man said slowly, aloud; "entirely too much for

me! But I can't sail this old hooker alone; I'll have to get out and

let her drift."

He removed completely one of the splintered bars from the broken cage.

"I've got to leave you, old fellow," he told the cowering animal, "but

I'll give you the run of the ship."

He went below once more and came quickly back with the log-book and

papers from the captain's room. He tied these in a tight wrapping of

oilcloth from the galley and hung them at his belt. He took the wheel

again and brought the cumbersome craft slowly into the wind. The bare

mast of his own sloop was bobbing alongside as he went down the line

and swam over to her.

Fending off from the wallowing hulk, he cut the line, and his small

craft slipped slowly astern as the big vessel fell off in the wind and

drew lumberingly away on its unguided course.

She vanished into the clear-cut horizon before the watching man ceased

his staring and pricked a point upon his chart that he estimated was

his position.

And he watched vainly for some sign of life on the heaving waters as

he set his sloop back on her easterly course.

* * * * *

It was a sun-tanned young man who walked with brisk strides into the

office of Admiral Struthers. The gold-striped arm of the uniformed man

was extended in quick greeting.

"Made it, did you?" he exclaimed. "Congratulations!"

"All O.K.," Thorpe agreed. "Ship and log are ready for your

verification."

"Talk sense," said the officer. "Have any trouble or excitement? Or

perhaps you are more interested in collecting a certain bet than you

are in discussing the trip."

"Damn the bet!" said the young man fervently. "And that's just what I

am here for--to talk about the trip. There were some little incidents

that may interest you."

He painted for the Admiral in brief, terse sentences the picture of

that daybreak on the Pacific, the line of breakers, white in the

vanishing night, the abandoned ship beyond, cracking her canvas to

tatters in the freshening breeze. And he told of his boarding her and

of what he had found.

"Where was this?" asked the officer, and Thorpe gave his position as

he had checked it.

"I reported the derelict to a passing steamer that same day," he

added, but the Admiral was calling for a chart. He spread it on the

desk before him and placed the tip of a pencil in the center of an

unbroken expanse.

"Breakers, you said?" he questioned. "Why, there are hundreds of

fathoms here, Mr. Thorpe."

* * * * *

"I know it," Thorpe agreed, "but I saw them--a stretch of white water

for an eighth of a mile. I know it's impossible, but true. But forget

that item for a time, Admiral. Look at this." He opened a brief case

and took out a log-book and some other papers.

"The log of the _Minnie R._," he explained briefly. "Nothing in it but

routine entries up to that morning and then nothing at all."

"Abandoned," mused the Admiral, "and they did not take to the boats.

There have been other instances--never explained."

"See if this helps any," suggested Thorpe and handed the other two

sheets of paper. "They were in the captain's cabin," he added.

Admiral Struthers glanced at them, then settled back in his chair.

"Dated September fourth," he said. "That would have been the day

previous to the time you found her." The writing was plain, in a

careful, well-formed hand. He cleared his throat and read aloud:

"Written by Jeremiah Wilkens of Salem, Mass., master of the _Minnie

R._, bound from Shanghai to San Pedro. I have sailed the seas for

forty years, and for the first time I am afraid. I hope I may destroy

this paper when the lights of San Pedro are safe in sight, but I am

writing here what it would shame me to set down in the ship's log,

though I know there are stranger happenings on the face of the waters

than man has ever seen--or has lived to tell.

* * * * *

"All this day I have been filled with fear. I have been watched--I

have felt it as surely as if a devil out of hell stood beside me with

his eyes fastened on mine. The men have felt it, too. They have been

frightened at nothing and have tried to conceal it as I have

done.--And the animals....

"A shark has followed us for days--it is gone to-day. The cats--we

have three on board--have howled horribly and have hidden themselves

in the cargo down below. The mate is bringing a big monkey to be sold

in Los Angeles. An orang-outang, he calls it. It has been an ugly

brute, shaking at the bars of its cage and showing its ugly teeth ever

since we left port. But to-day it is crouched in a corner of its cage

and will not stir even for food. The poor beast is in mortal terror.

"All this is more like the wandering talk of an old woman muttering in

a corner by the fireside of witches and the like than it is like a

truthful account set down by Jeremiah Wilkins. And now that I have

written it I see there is nothing to tell. Nothing but the shameful

account of my fear of some horror beyond my knowing. And now that it

is written I am tempted to destroy--No, I will wait--"

"And now what is this?" Admiral Struthers interrupted his reading to

ask. He turned the paper to read a coarse, slanting scrawl at the

bottom of the page.

"The eyes--the eyes--they are everywhere above us--God help--" The

writing trailed off in a straggling line.

* * * * *

The lips beneath the trim gray mustache drew themselves into a hard

line. It was a moment before Admiral Struthers raised his eyes to

meet those of Robert Thorpe.

"You found this in the captain's cabin?" he asked.

"Yes."

"And the captain was--"

"Gone."

"Blood stains?"

"No, but the door had been burst off its hinges. There had been a

struggle without a doubt."

The officer mused for a minute or two.

"Did they go aboard another vessel?" he pondered. "Abandon ship--open

the sea-cocks--sink it for the insurance?" He was trying vainly to

find some answer to the problem, some explanation that would not

impose too great a strain upon his own reason.

"I have reported to the owners," said Thorpe. "The _Minnie R._ was not

heavily insured."

The Admiral ruffled some papers on his desk to find a report.

"There has been another," he told Thorpe. "A tramp freighter is listed

as missing. She was last reported due east of the position you give.

She was coming this way--must have come through about the same

water--" He caught himself up abruptly. Thorpe sensed that an Admiral

of the Navy must not lend too credulous an ear to impossible stories.

"You've had an interesting experience, Mr. Thorpe," he said. "Most

interesting. Probably a derelict is the answer, some hull just afloat.

We will send out a general warning."

He handed the loose papers and the log book to the younger man. "This

stuff is rubbish," he stated with emphasis. "Captain Wilkins held his

command a year or so too long."

"You will do nothing about it?" Thorpe asked in astonishment.

"I said I would warn all shipping; there is nothing more to be done."

"I think there is." Thorpe's gray eye were steady as he regarded the

man at the desk. "I intend to run it down. There have been other such

instances, as you said--never explained. I mean to find the answer."

* * * * *

Admiral Struthers smiled indulgently. "Always after excitement," he

said. "You'll be writing another book, I expect. I shall look forward

to reading it ... but just what are you going to do?"

"I am going to the Islands," said Thorpe quietly. "I am going to

charter a small ship of some sort, and I am going out there and camp

on that spot in the hope of seeing those eyes and what is behind them.

I am leaving to-night."

Admiral Struthers leaned back to indulge in a hearty laugh. "I refused

you a passage on a destroyer once," he said, "and it was an expensive

mistake. I don't make the same mistake twice. Now I am going to offer

you a trip....

"The _Bennington_ is leaving to-day on a cruise to Manila. I'll hold

her an extra hour or two if you would like to go. She can drop you at

Honolulu or wherever you say. Lieutenant Commander Brent is in

command--you remember him in Manila, of course."

"Fine," Thorpe responded. "I'll be there."

"And," he added, as he took the Admiral's hand, "if I didn't object to

betting on a sure thing I would make you a little proposition. I would

bet any money that you would give your shirt to go along."

"I never bet, either," said Admiral Struthers, "on a sure loss. Now

get out of here, you young trouble-shooter, and let the Navy get to

work." His eyes were twinkling as he waved the young man out.

* * * * *

Thorpe found himself comfortably fixed on the _Bennington_. Brent, her

commander, was a fine example of the aggressive young chaps that the

destroyer fleet breeds. And he liked to play cribbage, Thorpe found.

They were pegging away industriously the sixth night out when the

first S.O.S. reached them. A message was placed before the commander.

He read it and tossed it to Thorpe as he rose from his chair.

"S.O.S.," said the radio sheet, "_Nagasaki Maru_, twenty-four

thirty-five N., one five eight West. Struck something unknown. Down at

the bow. May need help. Please stand by."

Captain Brent had left the room. A moment later, and the quiver and

tremble of the _Bennington_ told Thorpe they were running full speed

for the position of the stricken ship.

But: "Twenty-four thirty-five North," he mused, "and less than two

degrees west of where the poor old _Minnie R._ got hers. I wonder ...

I wonder...."

"We will be there in four hours," said Captain Brent on his return.

"Hope she lasts. But what have they struck out there? Derelict

probably, though she should have had Admiral Struthers' warning."

Robert Thorpe made no reply other than: "Wait here a minute, Brent. I

have something to show you."

* * * * *

He had not told the officer of his mission nor of his experience, but

he did so now. And he placed before him the wildly improbable

statement of the late Captain Wilkins.

"Something is there," surmised Captain Brent, "just awash,

probably--no superstructure visible. Your _Minnie R._ hit the same

thing."

"Something is there," Thorpe agreed. "I wish I knew what."

"This stuff has got to you, has it?" asked Brent as he returned the

papers of Captain Wilkins. He was quite evidently amused at the

thought.

"You weren't on the ship," said Thorpe, simply. "There was nothing to

see--nothing to tell. But I know...."

He followed Brent to the wireless room.

"Can you get the _Nagasaki_?" Brent asked.

"They know we are coming, sir," said the operator. "We seem to be the

only one anywhere near."

He handed the captain another message. "Something odd about that," he

said.

"_U. S. S. Bennington_," the captain read aloud. "We are still afloat.

On even keel now, but low in water. No water coming in. Engines full

speed ahead, but we make no headway. Apparently aground. _Nagasaki

Maru._"

"Why, that's impossible," Brent exclaimed impatiently. "What kind of

foolishness--" He left the question uncompleted. The radio man was

writing rapidly. Some message was coming at top speed. Both Brent and

Thorpe leaned over the man's shoulder to read as he wrote.

"_Bennington_ help," the pencil was writing, "sinking fast--decks

almost awash--we are being--"

In breathless silence they watched the pencil, poised above the paper

while the operator listened tensely to the silent night.

* * * * *

Again his ear received the wild jumble of dots and dashes sent by a

frenzied hand in that far-off room. His pencil automatically set down

the words. "Help--help--" it wrote before Thorpe's spellbound gaze,

"the eyes--the eyes--it is attack--"

And again the black night held only the rush and roar of torn waters

where the destroyer raced quivering through the darkness. The message,

as the waiting men well knew, would never be completed.

"A derelict!" Robert Thorpe exclaimed with unconscious scorn. But

Captain Brent was already at a communication tube.

"Chief? Captain Brent. Give her everything you've got. Drive the

_Bennington_ faster than she ever went before."

The slim ship was a quivering lance of steel that threw itself through

foaming waters, that shot with an endless, roaring surge of speed

toward that distant point in the heaving waste of the Pacific, and

that seemed, to the two silent men on the bridge, to put the dragging

miles behind them so slowly--so slowly.

"Let me see those papers," said Captain Brent, finally.

* * * * *

He read them in silence.

Then: "The eyes!" he said. "The eyes! That is what this other poor

devil said. My God, Thorpe, what is it? What can it be? We're not all

insane."

"I don't know what I expected to find," said Thorpe slowly. "I had

thought of many things, each wilder than the next. This Captain

Wilkins said the eyes were above him. I had visions of some sky

monster ... I had even thought of some strange aircraft from out in

space, perhaps, with round lights like eyes. I have pictured

impossibilities! But now--"

"Yes," the other questioned, "now?"

"There were tales in olden times of the Kraken," suggested Thorpe.

"The Kraken!" the captain scoffed. "A mythical monster of the sea.

Why, that was just a fable."

"True," was the quiet reply, "that was just a fable. And one of the

things I have learned is how frequently there is a basis of fact

underlying a fable. And, for that matter, how can we know there is no

such monster, some relic of a Mesozoic species supposed to be

extinct?"

He stood motionless, staring far out ahead into the dark. And Brent,

too, was silent. They seemed to try with unaided eyes to penetrate the

dark miles ahead and see what their sane minds refused to accept.

* * * * *

It was still dark when the search-light's sweeping beam picked up the

black hull and broad, red-striped funnels of the _Nagasaki Maru_. She

was riding high in the water, and her big bulk rolled and wallowed in

the trough of the great swells.

The _Bennington_ swept in a swift circle about the helpless hulk while

the lights played incessantly upon her decks. And the watching eyes

strained vainly for some signal to betoken life, for some sign that

their mad race had not been quite vain. Her engines had been shut

down; there was no steerage-way for the _Nagasaki Maru_, and, from all

they could see, there were no human hands to drag at the levers of her

waiting engines nor to twirl with sure touch the deserted helm. The

_Nagasaki Maru_ was abandoned.

The lights held steadily upon her as the _Bennington_ came alongside

and a boat was swung out smartly in its davits. But Thorpe knew he was

not alone in his wild surmise as to the cause of the catastrophe.

"Throw your lights around the water occasionally," Brent ordered. "Let

me know if you see anything."

"Yes sir," said the man at the search-light. "I will report if I spot

any survivors or boats."

"Report anything you see," said Commander Brent curtly.

"You go aboard if you want to," he suggested to Thorpe. "I will stay

here and be ready if you need help."

Thorpe nodded with approval as the small boat pulled away in the dark,

for there was activity apparent on the destroyer not warranted by a

mere rescue at sea. Gun-crews rushed to their stations; the tarpaulin

covers were off of the guns, and their slender lengths gleamed where

they covered the course of the boat.

"Brent is ready," Thorpe admitted, "for anything."

* * * * *

They found the iron ladder against the ship's side, and a sailor

sprang for it and made his way aboard. Thorpe was not the last to set

foot on deck, and he shuddered involuntarily at the eery silence he

knew awaited them.

It was the _Minnie R._ over again, as he expected, but with a

difference. The sailing vessel, before he boarded it, had been for

some time exposed to the sun, while the _Nagasaki Maru_ had not. And

here there were slimy trails still wet on the decks.

He went first to the wireless room. He must know the final answer to

that interrupted message, and he found it in emptiness. No radio man

was waiting him there, nor even a body to show the loser of an unequal

battle. But there was blood on the door-jamb where a body--the man's

body, Thorpe was sure--had been smashed against the wood. A wisp of

black hair in the blood gave its mute evidence of the hopeless fight.

And the slime, like the trails on the deck, smeared with odorous

vileness the whole room.

Thorpe went again to the deck, and, as on the other ship, he breathed

deeply to rid his lungs and nostrils of the abhorrent stench. The

ensign in charge of the boarding party approached.

"What kind of a rotten mess is this?" he demanded. "The ship is filthy

and not a soul on board. Not a man of them, officers or crew, and the

boats are all here. It's absolutely amazing, isn't it?"

"No," Thorpe told him, "about what we expected. What do you make of

this?" He touched with his foot a broad trail that shone wet in the

_Bennington's_ lights.

"The Lord knows," said the ensign in wonder. "It's all over and it

smells like a rotten dead fish. Well, we will be going back, sir." He

called to a petty officer to round up the men, and the boat was

brought alongside.

* * * * *

Their return to the _Bennington_ again through a pathway of light that

Thorpe knew was safe under the black muzzles of the destroyer's guns.

Or was it, he asked himself. Safe! Was anything safe from this

devilish mystery that could pluck each cowering human from the lowest

depths of this steel freighter, that could drag her down in the water

till the radio man sent his cry: "We are sinking!..."

He told Brent quietly, after the ensign had reported, of the struggles

in the wireless room and its few remaining traces. And he watched with

the commander through the hour of darkness while the _Bennington_

steamed in slow circles about the abandoned hulk, while her

search-lights played endlessly over the empty waters and the men at

the guns cast wondering glances at their skipper who ordered such

strange procedure when no danger was there.

With daylight the scene lost its sense of mysterious threat, and

Thorpe was eager to return to the abandoned ship.

"I might find something," he said, "some trace or indication of what

we have to fight."

"I must leave," said Commander Brent. "Oh, I'm coming back, never

fear," he added, at the look of dismay on Thorpe's face. The thought

of leaving this mystery unsolved was more than that young seeker after

adventure could accept.

"I'm coming back," Brent repeated. "I've been in communication with

the Admiral--Honolulu has relayed the messages through. All code, of

course; we mustn't alarm the whole Pacific with our nightmares. The

old man says to stick around and get the low-down on this damn thing."

"Then why leave?" objected Thorpe.

* * * * *

"Because I am coming around to your way of thinking, Thorpe. Because I

am as certain as can be that we have a monster of some sort to deal

with ... and because I haven't any depth charges. I want to run up to

the supply station at Honolulu and get a couple of ash-cans of TNT to

lay on top of the brute if we sight him."

"Glory be!" said Thorpe fervently. "That sounds like business. Go and

get your eggs and perhaps we can feed them to this devil--raw.... And

I think I'll stay here, if you will be back by dark."

"Better not," the other objected; but Thorpe overruled him.

"This thing attacks in the dark," he said. "I will lay a little bet on

that. It left the orang-outang on the _Minnie R._--quit at the first

sign of daylight. I will be safe through the day, and besides, the

beast has gutted this ship. It won't return, I imagine. And if I stay

there for the day--live as they lived, the men who manned that ship--I

may have some information that will be of help when you get back. But

for Heaven's sake, Brent, don't stop to pick any flowers on the way."

"It's your funeral," said Brent not too cheerfully. "The old man said

to give you every assistance, and perhaps that includes helping you

commit suicide."

But Robert Thorpe only laughed as Commander Brent gave his orders for

a small boat to be lowered. A ship's lantern and rockets for night

signals were taken at the officer's orders. "We'll be back before

dark," he said, "but take these as a precaution."

One favor Thorpe asked--that the ship's carpenter go over with him and

help him to make a strong-barred retreat of the wireless cabin.

"And I'll talk to you occasionally," he told Brent. "I tried the key

while I was aboard; the wireless is working on its batteries."

He waved a cheery good-by as the small boat pulled away. "And hurry

back," he called. The destroyer commander nodded an emphatic assent.

* * * * *

On board the _Nagasaki Maru_, Thorpe directed the carpenter and his

helpers in the work he wanted done. The man seemed to know

instinctively where to put his hands on needed supplies, and the

result was a virtual cage of strong oak bars enclosing the wireless

room, and braces of oak to bar the single door. Thorpe was not

assuming any bravado in his feeling of safety, but he was doing what

he had done in many other tight corners, and he prepared his defences

in advance.

These included weapons of offense as well. As the boat with the

destroyer's men pulled back to the _Bennington_, he placed in easy

reach in a corner of the room a heavy calibered rifle he had taken

from his belongings.

And, still, with all his feeling of security, there was a strange

depression fell upon him when the _Bennington's_ narrow hull was small

upon the horizon, and then that, too, was gone and only the heaving

swells and the wallowing hulk were his companions.

Only these? He shivered slightly as he thought of that unseen watcher

with the devil-eyes whose presence Captain Wilkins had felt--and his

men, and the poor terrified ape! He deliberately put from his mind the

thought of this; no use to start the day with morbid fears. He went

below to examine the cabins. But he carried the heavy elephant gun

with him wherever he went.

* * * * *

Below decks the signs of the marauder were everywhere, yet there was

little to be learned. The slimy trails dried quickly and vanished, but

not before Thorpe had traced them to the uttermost depths of the ship.

There was not a nook or corner that had gone unsearched in the

horrible quest for human food. And one thing impressed itself forcibly

upon the man's mind. He found a lantern, and he used it of necessity

in his explorations, but this thing had gone through the dark and with

unerring certainty had found its way to every victim.

"Can it see in the dark?" Thorpe questioned. "Or...." He visioned

dimly some denizen of the vast depths, living beyond the limits of the

sun's penetration, far in the abysmal darkness where its only light

must be self-made. But his mind failed in the attempt to picture what

manner of horror this thing might be.

Even in the hold its evil traces were found. There were tiers of metal

drums that still shone wet in his lantern's light. Calcium

carbide--for making acetylene, he supposed--marked "Made in U.S.A."

The _Nagasaki_ must have been westward bound.

* * * * *

He went, after an hour or so, to the wireless room, and only when he

relaxed in the safety of his improvised fortress did he realize how

tense had been every nerve and muscle through his long search. He

tried the wireless and got an instant response from the destroyer.

"Don't shoot it too fast," he spelled out slowly to the distant

operator: "I am only a dub. Just wanted to say hello and report all

O.K."

"Fine," was the steady, careful response. "We have had a little

trouble with our condensers--" There was a short pause, then the

message continued, this portion dictated by the commander. "Delay not

important. We will be back as agreed. Have picked up _S. S. Adelaide_

bound east in your latitude. Warned her to take northerly course

account derelict. See you later. Signed, Brent, commanding _U. S. S.

Bennington_."

The man in the barred room tapped off his acknowledgement and closed

the key. He suddenly realized he had had no breakfast, and the hours

had been slipping past. He took his gun again and went down to the

galley to prepare some coffee. It was not the time or place for an

enjoyable meal, but he would have relished it more had he not pictured

the _Adelaide_ and her lovely owner steaming across these threatening

seas.

He knew the captain of the _Adelaide_. "Obstinate pigheaded old

Scotchman!" "Hope he takes Brent's advice. Of course Brent couldn't

tell him the truth. We can't blat this wild yarn all over the air or

the passenger lines would have our scalps. But I wish the _Adelaide_

was safe in Manila."

* * * * *

His explorations in the afternoon were half-hearted and perfunctory.

There was nothing more to be learned. But he had seen in his mind some

vague outline of what they must meet. He saw a something, mammoth,

huge, that could grasp and hold an ocean freighter--against whose

great body he had seen the waves dash in a line of white spray. Yet a

something that could force its way down narrow passages, could press

with terrific strength on bolted doors and crush them inward, wrecked

and splintered. Some serpentine thing that felt and saw its way and

crawled so surely through the dark--found its prey--seized it--and

carried off a man as easily as it might a mouse.

No octopus, no matter what proportions, filled the description. He

gave up trying to see too clearly the awful thing. And he kept away

from the ship's rail when once he had ventured near. For there had

come to him a feeling of fear that had sent the waves of cold

trickling and prickling up his spine. Was there something really

there?... A waiting lurking horror in the depths?

"The eyes," he thought, "the eyes!..." And he went more quickly than

he knew to his barred retreat where again he might breathe quietly.

* * * * *

The position of the deserted ship was south of the regular steamer

lanes on the TransPacific run. Only a trace of smoke on the northern

horizon marked through the afternoon the passage of other craft. It

was a long and lonely vigil for the waiting man. But the _Bennington_

would return, and he listened in at intervals hoping to hear her

friendly signal.

The batteries operating the _Nagasaki's_ wireless were none too

strong; Thorpe saved their strength, though he tried at times to raise

the _Bennington_ somewhere beyond his reach.

The sun was touching the horizon when he got his first response. "Keep

up the old nerve," admonished the slow, careful sending of the

_Bennington's_ operator. "We have been delayed but we are on our way.

Signed, Brent."

The man in the wireless room placed the oak bars across the door, and

tried to believe he was nonchalant and unafraid as he laid out extra

clips of cartridges. But his eyes persisted in following the sinking

sun, and he watched from within his cage the coming of the quick dark.

The protecting glare of day must be unbearable to this monster from

the lightless depths, and daylight was vanishing. Thorpe's mind was

searching for additional means of defense. He found it in the cargo he

had seen. The drums of carbide! He could scatter it on the deck--it

reacted with water, and those slimy arms, if they came and touched it,

could find the contact hot. He took his lantern and went hastily below

to stagger back with a drum upon his shoulder.

In the half-light that was left him he forced the cover and then

rolled the drum about the swaying deck. The gray, earthly lumps of

carbide formed erratic lines. Useless perhaps, he admitted, but the

threatening dark forced the man to use every means at his command.

* * * * *

He was scattering the contents of a second drum when he stiffened

abruptly to rigid attention.

The ship, thrown broadside to the wide-spaced swells, had rolled

endlessly with a monotonous motion. But now the deck beneath him was

steadying. It assumed an abnormal levelness. The boat rose and fell

with the waves, but it no longer rolled. There was something beneath

holding, drawing on it.

Thorpe knew in that frozen second what it meant. The drum clattered to

the rail as he dashed for his room. Gun in hand, he watched with

staring eyes where the deserted deck showed dim and vague in the light

of the stars and the bow of the ship was lost in the uncertain dark of

night.

Wide-eyed he watched into the blackness, and he listened with

desperate attention for some slightest sound beyond the splashing of

waves and the creaking of spars.

Far in the west a light appeared, to glow and vanish and glow again in

the tumbling waters. The _Bennington_! His heart leaped at the

thought, then sank as he knew the destroyer's lights would not appear

from that direction.

Through a slow hour that seemed an eternity the oncoming ship drew

near, and he knew with a sudden, startling certainty that it was the

_Adelaide_--and Ruth Allaire--coming on, through into the horror

awaiting.

He leaned forward tensely as a sound reached his ears. A ghostly echo

of a sound, like the softest of smooth, slipping fabric upon hard

steel. And as he listened, before his staring eyes, a something came

between him and the lighted yacht.

It wavered and swung in the darkness. It was formless, uncertain of

outline, and it swung in the night out beyond the ship's rail till it

suddenly neared, waved high overhead, and the cold light of the stars

shone in pale reflection from an enormous, staring eye.

It surmounted a serpentine form that took shape in the dim radiance

without and came lower in undulating folds to crash heavily upon the

deck.

* * * * *

Thorpe's hand was upon the wireless key. He had wanted to warn off the

yacht, but not till the thud of the creature on the bare deck proved

its reality could he force his cold fingers to press the key.

Then, fast as his inexperience allowed, he called frantically for the

_Adelaide_. He spelled her name, over and over.... Would the sleepy

operator never answer?

The _Bennington_ broke in one. "Is that you, Thorpe? What is up?" they

demanded.

But Thorpe kept up his slow spelling of the yacht's name. He must get

a warning to them! Then he realized that the _Bennington_ could do it

better.

"_Bennington_," he called, "_Adelaide_ approaching. I am attacked.

Warn them off. Warn them--" His frantic, hissing dots and dashes died

immediately. Beneath his feet the _Nagasaki Maru_ was rolling again,

swinging free to the lift and thrust of the swells beneath.

"Good God!" he shouted aloud in his lonely cabin. "It's gone for the

yacht. _Adelaide_--turn north--full speed--" he clicked off on a slow,

stuttering key. "Head north. You are being attacked!" He groaned again

as he saw the _Adelaide's_ shining ports swing away from the safety of

the north; the ship broached broadside to the waves and came slowly to

a stop.

"_Bennington_," he radioed. "Brent--it has got the _Adelaide_.

Help--hurry! I am going over."

He tore wildly at the barred door, and he made a dash across the deck

to slip sprawling in a heap against the rail where the slimy traces of

the recent visitor stretched glistening on the deck.

* * * * *

How he lowered the boat Thorpe never knew. But he knew there was one

that the men from the _Bennington_ had swung over the side, and tore

madly at the tackle to let the boat crash miraculously upright into

the sea. He slung the rifle about his neck with a rope end--there were

cartridges in his pocket--and he went down the dangling lines and cast

off in a frenzy of haste.

What could he do? He hardly dared form the question. Only this stood

clear and unanswerable in his mind: The yacht was in the monster's

grip, and Ruth Allaire was there on board. Ruth Allaire, so smiling,

so friendly, so lovable! Food for that horror from the depths.... He

rowed with super-human strength to drive the heavy boat across the

wave-swept distance that separated them.

Between gasping breaths he turned at times to glance over his shoulder

and correct his course. And now, as he drew near, he saw though

indistinct the unmistakable, snakelike weaving of horrible tenuous

fingers, rolling and groping about the yacht.

They were plain as he drew alongside. The trim ship rose and fell with

the water, while over her side where Thorpe approached swung a long,

white monstrous rope of flesh. It retreated like the lash of a whip,

and the horrified watcher saw as it went the struggling figure of a

man in the grasp of flabby lips. And above them a single eye glared

wickedly.

Another vile, twisting arm rose from the afterdeck with a screaming

figure in its grasp and vanished into the water beyond the yacht.

There were others writhing about the decks. Thorpe saw them as he made

his boat fast and clambered aboard.

* * * * *

A wave of reeking air enveloped him as he reached the deck; the

nauseous stench from the monster's tentacles was horrible beyond

endurance. He gagged and choked as the stifling breath entered his

lungs.

A huge rope of slippery, throbbing flesh stretched its twisted length

toward the stern. It contracted as he watched into bulging muscular

rings and withdrew from the afterdeck. The deadly end of it stopped in

mid-air not twenty feet from where he stood. The jawlike pincers on it

held the limp form of an officer in its sucking grip, while above, in

a protuberance like a gnarled horn, a great eye glared into Thorpe's

with devilish hatred.

The beak opened sharply to drop its unconscious burden upon the deck,

and the watching man, petrified with horror, saw within the gaping maw

great sucking discs and beyond them a brilliant glow. The whole

cavernous pit was aflame with phosphorescent light. Dimly he knew that

this light explained the ability of the beastly arms to grope so

surely in the dark.

The eye narrowed as the gaping, fleshy jaws distended, and Robert

Thorpe, in a flash that galvanized him to action, was aware that his

fight for life was on. He fired blindly from the hip, and the recoil

of the heavy gun almost tore it from his hands. But he knew he had

aimed true, and the toothless, seeking jaws whipped in agony back into

the sea.

There were other arms whose eyes were searching the stern of the

yacht. Thorpe plunged frenziedly down a companionway for the cabin he

knew was Ruth Allaire's. Was he in time? Could he save her if he found

her? His mind was in a turmoil of half-formed plans as he rushed madly

down the corridor to find the body of the girl a limp huddle across

the threshold of her cabin.

* * * * *

She was alive; he knew it as he swung her soft body across one

shoulder and staggered with his burden up the stairs. If he could only

breathe! His throat was tight and strangling with the reeking

putrescence in the air. And before his eyes was a picture of the

strong oak bars of his own retreat. Somehow, some way, he must get

back to the abandoned ship.

An eye detected him as he came on deck, and he dropped the limp body

of the girl at his feet as he swung his rifle toward the glowing light

within the opening jaws. The sucking discs cupped and wrinkled in

dread readiness in the fleshy, toothless opening. He emptied the

magazine into the head, though he knew this was only a feeler and a

feeder for a still more horrible mouth in the monstrous body that rose

and fell tremendously in the dark waters beyond. But it was typical of

Robert Thorpe that even in the horror and frenzy of the moment he

rammed another clip of cartridges into his rifle before he stooped to

again raise the prostrate figure of Ruth Allaire.

The forward deck for the moment was clear; it rose high with the

weight of the writhing, twisting arms that weighed down the stern of

the yacht where the crew had taken refuge.

To think of helping them was worse than folly--he dismissed the

thought as another great eye came over the rail. Once more he used the

gun, then lowered the girl to the waiting boat, and cast off and rowed

with the stealthiest of strokes into the dark.

* * * * *

Behind him were whipping points of light above the white brilliance of

the yacht _Adelaide_. The boat was tossing in great waves that came

from beyond, where a body, incredibly huge, was tearing the waters to

foam. There were ghostly arms that shone in slimy wetness, that lashed

searchingly in all directions, as the monster gave vent to its fury at

Thorpe's attack. There were screaming human figures grasped in many of

the jaws, and the man was glad with a great thankfulness that the

girl's stupor could save her from the frightful sight.

He dared to row now, and his breath was coming in great choking sobs

of sheer exhaustion when at last he pulled the senseless form of Ruth

Allaire to the deck of the _Nagasaki_ and drew her within the frail

shelter of the wireless room.

Stout had the oaken bars appeared, and safe his refuge in the

barricaded room, but that was before he had seen in horrible reality

the fearful fury of this monster from the deep. He placed the braces

against the door and turned with hopeless haste to seize the wireless

key.

"_Bennington_," he called, and the answer came strong and clear.

"Where are you.... Help--" His fingers froze upon the key and the

answering message in his ears was unheeded as he watched across the

water the destruction of the yacht.

This craft that had dared to resist the onset of the brute, to fight

against it, to wound it, was feeling the full fury of the monster's

rage. The gleaming lights of the doomed ship were waving lines that

swept to and fro in the grip of those monstrous arms. The boat beneath

Thorpe's feet was tossing in the waves that told of the titanic

struggle. He had meant to look south for some sign of the oncoming

destroyer, but in fearful fascination he stared spellbound where the

masts of the trim yacht swept downward into the waves, where the green

of her star-board lantern glowed faintly for an instant, then

vanished, to leave only the darkness and the starlit sea.

* * * * *

A voice aroused him from his stupefaction. "Where am I ... where am

I?" Ruth Allaire was asking in a frightened whisper. "That terrible

thing--" She shuddered violently as memory returned to show again the

horror she had witnessed. "Where are we, Robert? And the

_Adelaide_--where is it?"

Thorpe turned slowly. The insane turmoil of the past hour had numbed

his brain, stunned him.

"The _Adelaide_--" he mumbled, and groped fumblingly for coherent

thoughts. He stared at the girl. She was half-risen from the floor

where he had laid her, and the sight of her quivering face brought

reason again to his mind. He knelt tenderly beside her and raised her

in his arms.

"Where is the yacht?" she repeated. "The _Adelaide_?"

"Gone," Thorpe told her. "Lost!" A thought struck him.

"Was your father on board, Ruth?"

Ruth was dazed.

"Lost," she repeated. "The _Adelaide_--lost!... No," she added in

belated response to Thorpe's question. "Daddy was not there. But the

men--Captain MacPherson ... that horrible monster...." She buried her

face in her hands as she realized what Thorpe's silence meant.

He held the trembling figure close as the girl whispered: "Where are

we, Robert? Are we safe?"

"We may win through yet," he told her through grim, set lips. He

realized abruptly that he was seeing the face of Ruth Allaire in the

light. He had left a lantern burning! He withdrew his arms from about

her and sprang quickly to his feet to put out the tell-tale light. In

darkness and quiet was their only safety. And he knew as he sprang

that he had waited too long. A soft body crashed heavily on the deck

outside.

* * * * *

The girl's voice was shrill with terror as she began a question.

Thorpe's hand pressed upon her lips in the dark where he stood

waiting--waiting.

A luminous something was glowing outside the cabin. It searched and

prodded about the deserted deck to whip upward at the audible hiss of

wet carbide. Another appeared; the rifle came slowly to the man's

shoulder as a pair of jaws gaped glowingly beyond the windows and an

eye stared unblinkingly from its hornlike sheath. It crashed madly

against the walls of the wireless room to shatter the glass and make

kindling of the woodwork of the sash. Thorpe fired once and again

before the specter vanished, and he knew with sickening certainty that

the wounds were only messages to some central brain that would send

other ravening tentacles against them. But the oak bars had held.

He reached in the brief interval for the key, and he sent out one

final call for help. He strained his ears against the head-set for

some friendly human word of hope.

"--rocket," the wireless man was saying. "Fire rockets. We can't

find--" A swift, writhing arm wrapped crushingly about the cabin as

the message ceased.

* * * * *

Thorpe seized his rifle and fired into the gray mass that bulged with

terrible muscular contractions through the window. He fired again to

aim lengthways of the arm and inflict as damaging a wound as his

weapon would permit.

The arm relaxed, but a score of others took up the attack. Again the

sickening stench was about them as gaping jaws gleamed fiery beneath

the hateful eyes and tore at the flimsy structure. Thorpe jammed more

cartridges into the gun and fired again and again, then dropped the

weapon to fumble for the rockets that Brent had given him.

He lighted one with trembling fingers; the first ball shot straight

into a waiting mouth. Another ignited a searing flame of acetlylene

gas where a wet arm writhed in the hot carbide trail. The man leaned

far out through the broken window.

No time to look around. He let the red flares stream upward high into

the air, then dropped the rocket hissing on the deck to seize once

more the rifle.

A mass of muscle crashed against the door; it went to splinters under

the impact, and only the two oak bars remained to hold in check the

horrible tentacles and the darting heads. One mouth closed to a

pointed end that forced its way between the bars. The oak gave under

the strain as Robert Thorpe pulled vainly at an empty gun. Beside him

rose shrieks of terror as the monstrous thing came on, and Thorpe beat

with frantic fury with his clubbed rifle at the fleshy snout.

He knew as he swung the weapon that the shrieks had ceased, then

smiled grimly in the numbing horror as he realized that Ruth Allaire

was beside him. A piece of oak was in her hands, and she was striking

with desperate and silent fury at the slimy flesh.

* * * * *

It was the end, Thorpe knew, and suddenly he was glad. The nightmare

was over, and the end was coming with this girl beside him. But Robert

Thorpe was fighting on to the last, and he tried to make his blows

reach outward to the hateful devilish eye.

He saw it plainly now, for the deck was a glare of white light. He saw

the eye and the thick arm behind it and the score of others that made

a heaving, knotted mass were brilliant and wetly shining. He could see

now how best to strike, and he turned his gun to thrust with the

barrel at the eye.

It withdrew before his stroke--the jaws slid backward to the deck.

There were sounds that hammered at his ears. "The guns! The guns!" a

girl was screaming. Across the deck, where a search-light played,

huge arms were lashing backward toward the sea. The waves beyond had

vanished where a monstrous body shone wetly black in a blinding glare.

And the man hung panting, helpless, on the one remaining bar across

the doorway to look where, beyond, her forward guns a spitting stream

of staccato flashes, the _Bennington_ tore the waves to high-thrown

spray. Her four clean funnels swung far over as the slim ship, with

her stabbing, crashing guns, swung in a sweeping circle to bear down

upon the black bulk slowly sinking in the search-light's glare.

The vast body had vanished as the destroyer shot like one of her own

projectiles over the spot where the beast had lain. And then, where

she had passed, the sea arose in a heaving mound. The big ship beneath

the watching man shuddered again as another depth charge grumbled its

challenge to the master of the deeps.

* * * * *

The warship went careening on an arc to return and throw the full

glare of her search-lights on the scene. They lighted a vast sea,

strangely stilled. An oily smoothness leveled waves and ironed them

out to show more clearly the convulsions of a torn mass that rose

slowly into sight.

Thorpe in some way found himself outside the cabin. And he knew that

the girl was again beside him as he stared and stared at what the

waters held. A bloated serpent form beyond believing was struggling in

the greasy swell. Its waving tentacles again were flung aloft in

impotent fury, and, beneath them, where their thick ends jointed the

body, a head with one horrible eye rose into the air. A thick-lipped

mouth gaped open, and the gleam of molars shone white in the blinding

glare.

The twisting body shuddered throughout its vast bulk, and the waving

arms and futile staring eyes dropped helpless into the splashing sea.

Again the revolting head was raised as the destroyer sent a rain of

shells into its fearful mass. Once more the oily seas were calm. They

closed over the whirling vortex where a denizen of the lightless

depths was returning to those distant, subterranean caverns--returning

as food for what other voracious monsters might still exist.

The man's arm was about the figure of the girl, trembling anew in a

fresh reaction from the horror they had escaped, when a small boat

drew alongside.

"They're safe," a hoarse voice bellowed back to the destroyer, and a

man came monkeywise up a rope where Thorpe had launched his boat.

And now, as one in a dream, Thorpe allowed the girl to be taken from

him, to be lowered to the waiting boat. He clambered down himself and

in silence was rowed across to the destroyer.

"Thank God!" said Brent, as he met them at the rail. "You're safe, old

man ... and Miss Allaire ... both of you! You let off that rocket just

in time; we couldn't pick you up with our light--

"And now," he added, "we're going back; back to San Diego. The Admiral

wants a word of mouth report."

Thorpe stilled him with a heavy gesture. "Give Ruth an opiate," he

said dully. "Let her forget ... forget!... Good God, can we ever

forget--" He stumbled forward, heedless of Brent's arm across his

shoulders as the surgeon took the girl in charge.

* * * * *

Admiral Struthers, U.S.N., leaned back from his desk and blew a cloud

of smoke thoughtfully toward the ceiling. He looked silently from

Thorpe to Commander Brent.

"If either one of you had come to me with such a report," he said

finally, "I would have found it incredible; I would have thought you

were entirely insane, or trying some wild hoax."

"I wish it were a damn lie," said Thorpe quietly. "I wish I didn't

have to believe it." There were new lines about the young-old eyes,

lines that spoke what the lips would not confess of sleepless nights

and the impress of a picture he could not erase.

"Well, we have kept it out of the papers," said the Admiral. "Said it was a

derelict, and the wild messages floating about were from an inexperienced

man, frightened and irresponsible. Bad advertising--very--for the passenger

lines."

"Quite," Commander Brent agreed, "but of course Mr. Thorpe may want to

use this in his next book of travel. He has earned the right without

doubt."

"No," said Thorpe emphatically. "No! I told you, Brent, there was

often a factual basis for fables--remember? Well, we have proved that.

But sometimes it is best to leave the fables just fables. I think you

will agree." A light step sounded in the corridor beyond. "Nothing of

this to Miss Allaire," he said sharply.

The men rose as Ruth Allaire entered the room. "We were just

speaking," said the Admiral with an engaging smile beneath his

close-cut mustache, "of the matter of a bet. Mr. Thorpe has won

handily, and he has taught me a lesson."

He took a check book from his desk. "What charity would you like to

name, Miss Allaire? That was left to you, you remember."

"Some seamen's home," said Ruth Allaire gravely. "You will know best,

if you two are really serious about that silly bet."

"That bet, my dear," said Robert Thorpe with smiling eyes, "was very

serious ... and it has had most serious consequences." He turned to

the waiting men and extended a hand in farewell.

"We are going to Europe, Ruth and I," he told them. "Just rambling

around a bit. Our honeymoon, you know. Look us up if you're cruising

out that way."

Murder Madness

PART TWO OF A FOUR-PART NOVEL

_By Murray Leinster_

[Illustration: "_As the madness grew, the two men fought. They were

murder mad. The local sub-deputy gave his guests the thrill of

watching maniacs battling to the death._"]

[Sidenote: Bell, of the secret "Trade," strikes into the South

American jungle to find the hidden stronghold of The Master--the

unknown monster whose diabolical poison swiftly and surely is

enslaving the whole continent.]

Seven United States Secret Service men have disappeared in South

America. Another is found--a screaming homicidal maniac. It is rumored

that they are victims of a diabolical poison which produces "murder

madness."

Charley Bell, of the "Trade"--a secret service organization that does

not officially exist--discovers that a sinister system of slavery is

flourishing in South America, headed by a mysterious man known only as

The Master. This slavery is accomplished by means of a poison which

causes its victims to experience a horrible writhing of the hands,

followed by a madness to do murder, two weeks after the poison is

taken.

The victims get relief only with an antidote supplied through Ribiera,

The Master's Chief Deputy; but in the antidote there is more of the

poison which again in two weeks will take effect. And so it is that a

person who once receives the poison is forever enslaved.

[Illustration]

Bell learns that Ribiera has kidnapped Paula Canalejas, daughter of a

Brazilian cabinet minister--himself a victim--who has killed himself

on feeling the "murder madness," caused by the poison, coming over

him. Bell corners Ribiera in his home, buries the muzzles of two

six-guns in his stomach, and demands that he set Paula free.

CHAPTER VI

In this room the electric lights were necessary at all times. And it

occurred to Bell irrelevantly that perhaps there were no windows

because there might be sometimes rather noisy scenes within these

walls. And windows will convey the sound of screaming to the outside

air, while solid walls will not.

He stood alert and grim, with his revolvers pressing into Ribiera's

flabby flesh. His fingers were tensed upon the triggers. If he killed

Ribiera, he would be killed. Of course. And men and women he had known

and liked might be doomed to the most horrible of fates by Ribiera's

death. Yet even the death or madness of many men was preferable to the

success of the conspiracy in which Ribiera seemed to figure largely.

Ribiera looked up at him with the eyes of a terrified snake. There was

a little stirring at the door.

"Your friends," said Bell softly, "had better not come close."

Ribiera gasped an order. The stirrings stopped. Paula came slowly into

the room quite alone. She smiled queerly at Bell.

"I believed that you would come," she said quietly. "And yet I do not

know that we can escape."

"We're going to try," said Bell grimly. To Ribiera he added curtly,

"You'd better order the path cleared to the door, and have one of your

cars brought around."

* * * * *

Ribiera croaked a repetition of the command.

"Now stand up--slowly," said Bell evenly. "Very slowly. I don't want

to die, Ribiera, so I don't want to kill you. But I haven't much hope

of escape, so I shan't hesitate very long about doing it. And I've got

these guns' hammers trembling at full cock. If I get a bullet through

my head, they'll go off just the same and kill you."

Ribiera got up. Slowly. His face was a pasty gray.

"Your major-domo," Bell told him matter-of-factly, "will go before us

and open every door on both sides of the way to the street. Paula"--he

used her given name without thought, or without realizing it--"Paula

will go and look into each door. If she as much as looks frightened, I

fire, and try to fight the rest of the way clear. Understand? I'm

going to get down to a boat I have ready in the harbor if I have to

kill you and every living soul in the house!"

There was no boat in the harbor, naturally. But the major-domo moved

hesitantly across the room, looking at his master for orders. For

Ribiera to die meant death or madness to his slaves. The major-domo's

face was ghastly with fear. He moved onward, and Bell heard the sound

of doors being thrust wide. Once he gave a command in the staccato

fashion of a terrified man. Bell nodded grimly.

"Now we'll move. Slowly, Ribiera! Always slowly.... Ah! That's better!

Paula, you go on before and look into each room. I shall be sorry if

any of your servants follow after you, Ribiera.... Through the

doorway. Yes! All clear, Paula? I'm balancing the hammers very

carefully, Ribiera. Very delicate work. It is fortunate for you that

my nerves are rather steady. But really, I don't much care.... Still

all clear before us, Paula? With the servants nerve-racked as they

are, I believe we'll make it through, even if I do kill Ribiera.

There'll be no particular point in killing us then. It won't help

them. Don't stumble, please, Ribiera.... Go carefully, and very

slowly...."

* * * * *

Ribiera's face was a gray mask of terror when they reached the door. A

long, low car with two men on the chauffeur's seat was waiting.

"Only one man up front, Ribiera," said Bell dryly. "No ostentation,

please. Now, I hope your servants haven't summoned the police, because

they might want to stop me from marching you out there with a gun in

the small of your back. And that would be deplorable, Ribiera. Quite

deplorable."

With a glance, he ordered Paula into the tonneau. He followed her,

driving Ribiera before him. There seemed to be none about but the

stricken, terrified servant who had opened the door for their exit.

"My friend," Bell told the major-domo grimly, "I'll give you a bit of

comfort. I'm not going to try to take the Senhor Ribiera away with me.

Once I'm on board the yacht that waits for me, I'll release him so he

can keep you poor devils sane until my Government has found a way to

beat this devilish poison of his. Then I'll come back and kill him.

Now you can tell the chauffeur to drive us to the Biera Mar."

He settled back in his seat. There were beads of perspiration on his

forehead, but he could not wipe them off. He held the two revolvers

against Ribiera's flabby body.

* * * * *

The car turned the corner, and he added dryly:

"Your servants, Ribiera, will warn your more prominent slaves of my

intention of going on board a yacht. Preparations will be made to stop

every pleasure boat and search it for me. So ... tell your chauffeur

to swing about and make for the flying field. And tell him to drive

carefully, by the way. I've still got these guns on a very fine

adjustment of the trigger-pressure."

Ribiera croaked the order. Bell was exactly savage enough to kill him

if he did not escape.

For twenty minutes the car sped through the residential districts of

Rio. The sun was high in the air, but clouds were banking up above the

Pao d'Assucar--the Sugarloaf--and it looked as if there might be one

of the sudden summer thunderstorms that sometimes sweep Rio.

Then the clear road to the flying field. Rio has the largest

metropolitan district in the world, but a great deal of it is piled on

end, and Rio itself built on most of the rest. The flying field is

necessarily some miles from even the residential districts, for the

sake of a level plain of sufficient area.

The car shot ahead through practically untouched jungle, interspersed

with tiny clearings in which were patchwork houses that might have

been a thousand miles in the interior instead of so near the center of

all civilization in Brazil. Up smooth gradients. Around beautifully

engineered curves.

* * * * *

Bell put aside one revolver long enough to search Ribiera carefully.

He found a pearl-handled automatic, and handed it to Paula.

"Worth having," he said cheerfully. "I wonder if you'd mind searching

the chauffeur: with that gun at his head I think he'd be peaceful. You

needn't have him stop."

Paula stood up, smiling a little.

"I did not think I lacked courage, Senhor," she observed, "but you

have taught me more."

"_Nil desperandum_," said Bell lightly. He relaxed deliberately.

Matters would be tense at the flying field, and he would need to be

wholly calm. There was little danger of an attempt at rescue here, and

the necessity of being ready to shoot Ribiera at any instant was no

longer a matter of split seconds.

He watched, while, bent over the back of the front seat, she extracted

two squat weapons from the chauffeur's pockets.

"Quite an arsenal," said Bell as he pocketed them. He turned

pleasantly to Ribiera. "Now, Ribiera, you understand just what I want.

That big amphibian plane of yours is fairly fast, and once when I was

merely your guest you assured me that it was always kept fueled and

even provisioned for a long flight. When we reach the flying field I

want it rolled out and warmed up, over at the other end of the field

from the flying line. We'll go over to it in the car.

"And I've thought of something. It worried me, before, because

sometimes if a man's shot he merely relaxes all over. So while we're

at the flying field I'm going to be holding back the triggers of these

guns with my thumbs. I don't have to pull the trigger at all--just let

go and they'll go off. It isn't so fine an adjustment as I had just

now, but it's safer for you as long as you behave. And you might urge

your chauffeur to be cautious. I do hope, Ribiera, that you won't look

as if you were frightened. If there's any hitch, and delay for letting

some fuel out of the tanks or messing up the motors, I'll be very

sorry for you."

* * * * *

The car swooped out into bright sunshine. The flying field lay below,

already in the shadow of the banking clouds above. Hangars lay

stretched out across the level space.

Through the gates. Ribiera licked his lips. Bell jammed the revolver

muzzles closer against his sides. The chauffeur halted the car. Paula

spoke softly to him. He stiffened. Bell found it possible to smile

faintly.

Ribiera gave orders. There was a moment's pause--the revolver muzzles

went deeper into his side--and he snarled a repetition. The official

cringed and moved swiftly.

"You have chosen your slaves well, Ribiera," said Bell coolly. "They

seem to occupy all strategic positions. We'll ride across."

The gears clashed. The car swerved forward and went deliberately

across the wide clear space that was the flying field. It halted near

the farther side. In minutes the door of a hangar swung wide. There

was the sputtering of a not-yet-warmed-up motor. The big plane came

slowly out, its motors coughing now and then. It swung clumsily across

the field, turned in a wide circle, and stopped some forty or fifty

feet from the car.

"Send the mechanic back, on foot," said Bell softly.

Again Ribiera found it expedient to snarl. And Bell added, gently,

while the throttled-down motors of the big amphibian boomed on:

"Now get out of the car."

Tiny figures began to gaze curiously at them from the row of hangars.

The mechanic, starting back on foot, the four people getting out of

the car, the big plane waiting....

* * * * *

With his revolver ready and aimed at Ribiera's bulk, Bell reached in

the front of the car and turned off the switch. The motor died

abruptly. He put the key in his pocket.

"Just to get a minute or two extra start," he said dryly. "Climb up in

the plane, Paula."

She obeyed, and turned at the top.

"I will cover them until you are up," she said quietly.

Bell laughed, now. A genuine laugh, for the first time in many days.

"We do work together!" he said cheerfully.

But he backed up the ladder. There was a stirring over by the hangars.

The mechanic who had taxied the plane to this spot was a dwindling

speck, no more than a third of the way across the field. But even from

the distant hangars it could be seen that something was wrong.

"Close the door, Paula," said Bell. He had seated himself at the

controls, and scanned the instruments closely.

This machine was heavy and large and massive. The boat-body between

the retractable wheels added weight to the structure, and when Bell

gave it the gun it seemed to pick up speed with an irritating

slowness, and to roll and lurch very heavily when it did begin to

approach flying speed. The run was long before the tail came up. It

was longer before the joltings lessened and the plane began to rise

slowly, with the solid steadiness that only a large and heavily loaded

plane can compass.

* * * * *

Up, and up.... Bell was three hundred feet high when he crossed the

hangars and saw tiny faces staring up at him. Some of the small

figures were pointing across the field. The big plane circled widely,

gaining altitude, and Bell gazed down. Ribiera was gesticulating

wildly, pointing upward to the soaring thing, shaking his fist at it,

and making imperious, frantic motions of command.

Bell took one quick glance all about the horizon. Toward the sea the

sun shone down brilliantly upon the city. Inland a broad white wall of

advancing rain moved toward the coastline. And Bell smiled frostily,

and flung the big ship into a dive and swooped down upon Ribiera as a

hawk might swoop at a chicken.

Ribiera saw the monster thing bearing down savagely, its motors

bellowing, its nose pointed directly at him. And there is absolutely

nothing more terrifying upon the earth than to see a plane diving upon

you with deadly intent. A panic that throws back to non-human

ancestors seizes upon a man. He feels the paralysis of those ancient

anthropoids who were preyed upon by dying races of winged monsters in

the past. That racial, atavistic terror seizes upon him.

Bell laughed, though it sounded more like a bark, as Ribiera flung

himself to the ground and screamed hoarsely when the plane seemed

about to pounce upon him. The shrill timbre of the shriek cut through

the roaring of the motors, even through the thick padding of the big

plane's cabin walls that reduced that roaring to a not intolerable

growl.

* * * * *

But the plane passed ten feet or more above his head. It rose, and

climbed steeply, and passed again above the now buzzing, agitated

hangars, and climbed above the hills behind the flying field as some

men went running and others moved by swifter means toward the shaken,

nerve-racked Ribiera, on whose lips were flecks of foam.

Bell looked far below and far behind him. The incredible greenness of

tropic verdure, of the jungle which rings Rio all about. The many

glitterings of sunlight upon glass, and upon the polished domes of

sundry public buildings, and the multitudinous shimmerings of the

tropic sun upon the bay. The deep dark shadow of the banking clouds

drew a sharp line across the earth, and deep in that shadow lay the

flying field, growing small and distant as the plane flew on. But

specks raced across the wide expanse. In a peculiar, irrational

fashion those specks darted toward a nearly invisible speck, and

encountered other specks darting away from that nearly invisible

speck, and gradually all the specks were turned about and racing for

the angular, toy-block squares which were the hangars of the

aeroplanes of the city of Rio de Janeiro.

Little white things appeared from those hangars--planes being thrust

out into the open air while motes of men raced agitatedly about them.

One of them was suddenly in motion. It moved slowly and clumsily

across the ground, and then abruptly moved more swiftly. It seemed to

float upward and to swing about in mid-air. It came floating toward

the amphibian, though apparently nearly stationary against the sky.

Another moved jerkily, and another....

* * * * *

Just before the big plane dived into the wide white wall of falling

water, the air behind it seemed to swarm with aircraft.

In the cabin of the amphibian, of course, the bellowing of the motors

outside was muffled to a certain degree. Paula clung to the seats and

moved awkwardly up to the place beside Bell. She had just managed to

seat herself when the falling sheet of water obliterated all the

world.

"Strap yourself in your seat," he said in her ear above the persistent

tumult without. "Then you might adjust my safety-belt. Well be flying

blind in this rain. I hope the propellers hold."

She fumbled, first at the belt beside his upholstered chair, and only

afterward adjusted her own. He sent a quick glance at her.

"Shouldn't have done that," he said quietly. "I can manage somehow."

The plane lurched and tumbled wildly. He kicked rudder and jerked on

the stick, watching the instrument board closely. In moments the wild

gyrations ceased.

"The beginning of this," he said evenly, "is going to be hectic.

There'll be lightning soon."

Almost on his words the gray mist out the cabin windows seemed to

flame. There was thunder even above the motors. But the faint,

perceptible trembling of the whole plane under the impulse of its

engines kept on. Bell kept his eyes on the bank and turn indicator,

glancing now and then at the altimeter.

"We've got to climb," he said shortly, "up where the lightning is,

too. We want to pass the Serra da Carioca with room to spare, or we'll

crash on it."

There was no noticeable change in the progress of the plane, of

course. Rain was dashing against the windows of the cabin with an

incredible velocity. Rain at a hundred miles an hour acts more like

hail than water, anyhow, and Bell was trusting grimly to the hope that

the propellers were of steel, which will withstand even hail, and a

hope that the blast through the engine cowlings would keep the wiring

free of water-made short circuits.

* * * * *

But the air was bad beyond belief. At times the plane spun like

thistledown in a vast and venomous flood that crashed into the

windows with a vicious rattling. Lightning began and grew fiercer. It

seemed at times as if the plane were whirling crazily in sheer

incandescent flame. The swift air-currents at the beginning of a

tropic thunderstorm were here multiplied in trickiness and velocity by

the hills of the Serra da Carioca, and Bell was flying blind as well.

The safety-belts were needed fifty times within twenty minutes, as the

big ship was flung about by fierce blasts that sometimes blew even the

rain upward for a time. And over all, as the amphibian spun madly, and

toppled crazily and fought for height, there was the terrific,

incessant crashing of thunder which was horribly close, and the

crackling flares of lightning all about.

"I'm going to take a chance," said Bell curtly above the uproar, with

the windows seeming to look out upon the fires of hell. "I think we're

high enough. The compass has gone crazy, but I'm going to risk it."

Again there was no perceptible alteration in the motion of the ship,

but he fought it steadily toward the west. And it seemed that he

actually was passing beyond the first fierce fringe of the storm,

because the lightning became--well, not less frequent, but less

continuous.

* * * * *

And suddenly, in a blinding flare of light that made every separate

raindrop look like a speck of molten metal, he saw another airplane.

It was close. Breath-takingly close. It came diving down out of

nowhere and passed less than twenty yards before the nose of the

amphibian. It glistened with wet, and glittered unbearably in the

incredible brightness of the lightning. Every spot and speck and

detail showed with an almost ghastly distinctness. But it dived on

past, its pilot rigid and tense and unseeing, plunging like a meteor

straight downward. The golden, iridescent mist of rain closed over its

body. And it was gone.

Ten minutes later Bell was driving onward through a gray obscurity,

which now was no more than tinted pink by receding lightning-flashes.

The air was still uneven and treacherous. The big plane hurtled

downward hundreds of feet in wild descending gusts among the hills,

and was then flung upward on invisible billows of air for other

hundreds of feet. But it was less uncontrollable. There were periods

of minutes when the safety-belts did not come into use.

* * * * *

And later still, half an hour perhaps, the steadiness of the air gave

assurance that the plane was past the range of the Serra da Carioca

and was headed inland. He drove on, watching his instruments and

flying blind, but with a gathering confidence in an ultimate escape

from the swarm of aircraft Ribiera had sent aloft in the teeth of the

storm to hunt for him. The motors hummed outside the padded cabin. The

girl beside him was very quiet and very still and very pale.

"We want to get out of this before long," he said in her ear, "and

then we can find out where we are, and especially begin to make some

plans for ourselves."

Her eyes turned to him. There was a curious stiffness in her manner.

It might have seemed reserve, but Bell recognized the symptoms of a

woman whose self-control is hanging by a thread. He smiled.

"Hold on a while yet," he said gently. "I know you want to cry. But

please hold on a while yet. When we reach friends...."

Her hands went to her throat, and he could feel the effort of will

that kept her voice steady.

"Friends? We have no friends." She managed a smile. "The Senhor

Ribiera explained to me when I arrived at his house how it was that no

questions would be asked about my disappearance. My father is dead.

The newspapers this morning said that it was not known whether he

killed himself or was assassinated. The Senhor Ribiera has given

orders to his slaves. The newspapers of this afternoon will inform a

horrified world that you and I, together, murdered my father that we

might flee together with such of his riches as he had actually

gathered together for me to take away. We are murderers, my friend.

Cables and telegraph wires are reporting the news. The daughter of the

Minister of War of the Republic of Brazil was assisted by her lover to

murder her father. She has fled with him. Now--where are we still to

find friends?"

* * * * *

Bell stared, for the fraction of an instant. One thought came to him,

and was checked. The Trade does not exist, anywhere. The Trade would

not help. And murderers are always duly handed over when the

Government of the United States is requested politely to do so by

another nation. Always. And so far as the whole civilized world was

concerned they were murderers. Even the employees of the flying field

who were not subject to The Master would swear to the strictly

accurate story of their escape together.

"It is just scandalous enough and horrible enough," said Bell quietly,

"to be reprinted everywhere as news. You're right. We haven't any

friends. We're up against it. And so I think we'll have to hunt down

and kill The Master. Then we'll be believed. And there are just two of

us, with what weapons we have in our pockets, to attack. How many

thousands of slaves do you suppose The Master has by now?"

And, quite suddenly, he laughed.