Ultimate Collection

"How do you like these under-the-earth corridors, Mr. Costigan?" he switched suddenly. "You thought of them—what? No doubt that the white savages of your Middle Ages built them? Faugh! These tunnels are older than your world! They were brought into being by mighty kings, too many eons ago for your mind to grasp, when an imperial city towered where this crude village of London stands. All trace of that metropolis has crumbled to dust and vanished, but these corridors were built by more than human skill—ha ha! Of all the teeming thousands who move daily above them, none knows of their existence save my servants—and not all of them. Zuleika, for instance, does not know of them, for of late I have begun to doubt her loyalty and shall doubtless soon make of her an example."

At that I hurled myself blindly against the side of the cage, a red wave of hate and fury tossing me in its grip. I seized the bars and strained until the veins stood out on my forehead and the muscles bulged and crackled in my arms and shoulders. And the bars bent before my onslaught—a little but no more, and finally the power flowed from my limbs and I sank down trembling and weakened. Kathulos watched me imperturbably.

"The bars hold," be announced with something almost like relief in his tone. "Frankly, I prefer to be on the opposite side of them. You are a human ape if there was ever one."

He laughed suddenly and wildly.

"But why do you seek to oppose me?" he shrieked unexpectedly. "Why defy me, who am Kathulos, the Sorcerer, great even in the days of the old empire? Today, invincible! A magician, a scientist, among ignorant savages! Ha ha!"

I shuddered, and sudden blinding light broke in on me. Kathulos himself was an addict, and was fired by the stuff of his choice! What hellish concoction was strong enough, terrible enough to thrill the Master and inflame him, I do not know, nor do I wish to know. Of all the uncanny knowledge that was his, I, knowing the man as I did, count this the most weird and grisly.

"You, you paltry fool!" he was ranting, his face lit supernaturally.

"Know you who I am? Kathulos of Egypt! Bah! They knew me in the old days! I reigned in the dim misty sea lands ages and ages before the sea rose and engulfed the land. I died, not as men die; the magic draft of life everlasting was ours! I drank deep and slept. Long I slept in my lacquered case! My flesh withered and grew hard; my blood dried in my veins. I became as one dead. But still within me burned the spirit of life, sleeping but anticipating the awakening. The great cities crumbled to dust. The sea drank the land. The tall shrines and the lofty spires sank beneath the green waves. All this I knew as I slept, as a man knows in dreams. Kathulos of Egypt? Faugh! Kathulos of Atlantis!"

I uttered a sudden involuntary cry. This was too grisly for sanity.

"Aye, the magician, the sorcerer.

"And down the long years of savagery, through which the barbaric races struggled to rise without their masters, the legend came of the day of empire, when one of the Old Race would rise up from the sea. Aye, and lead to victory the black people who were our slaves in the old days.

"These brown and yellow people, what care I for them? The blacks were the slaves of my race, and I am their god today. They will obey me. The yellow and the brown peoples are fools—I make them my tools and the day will come when my black warriors will turn on them and slay at my word. And you, you white barbarians, whose ape-ancestors forever defied my race and me, your doom is at hand! And when I mount my universal throne, the only whites shall be white slaves!

"The day came as prophesied, when my case, breaking free from the halls where it lay—where it had lain when Atlantis was still sovereign of the world—where since her empery it had sunk into the green fathoms— when my case, I say, was smitten by the deep sea tides and moved and stirred, and thrust aside the clinging seaweed that masks temples and minarets, and came floating up past the lofty sapphire and golden spires, up through the green waters, to float upon the lazy waves of the sea.

"Then came a white fool carrying out the destiny of which he was not aware. The men on his ship, true believers, knew that the time had come. And I —the air entered my nostrils and I awoke from the long, long sleep. I stirred and moved and lived. And rising in the night, I slew the fool that had lifted me from the ocean, and my servants made obeisance to me and took me into Africa, where I abode awhile and learned new languages and new ways of a new world and became strong.

"The wisdom of your dreary world—ha ha! I who delved deeper in the mysteries of the old than any man dared go! All that men know today, I know, and the knowledge beside that which I have brought down the centuries is as a grain of sand beside a mountain! You should know something of that knowledge! By it I lifted you from one hell to plunge you into a greater! You fool, here at my hand is that which would lift you from this! Aye, would strike from you the chains whereby I have bound you!"

He snatched up a golden vial and shook it before my gaze. I eyed it as men dying in the desert must eye the distant mirages. Kathulos fingered it meditatively. His unnatural excitement seemed to have passed suddenly, and when he spoke again it was in the passionless, measured tones of the scientist.

"That would indeed be an experiment worthwhile—to free you of the elixir habit and see if your dope-riddled body would sustain life. Nine times out of ten the victim, with the need and stimulus removed, would die— but you are such a giant of a brute—"

He sighed and set the vial down.

"The dreamer opposes the man of destiny. My time is not my own or I should choose to spend my life pent in my laboratories, carrying out my experiments. But now, as in the days of the old empire when kings sought my counsel, I must work and labor for the good of the race at large. Aye, I must toil and sow the seed of glory against the full coming of the imperial days when the seas give up all their living dead."

I shuddered. Kathulos laughed wildly again. His fingers began to drum his chair arms and his face gleamed with the unnatural light once more. The red visions had begun to seethe in his skull again.

"Under the green seas they lie, the ancient masters, in their lacquered cases, dead as men reckon death, but only sleeping. Sleeping through the long ages as hours, awaiting the day of awakening! The old masters, the wise men, who foresaw the day when the sea would gulp the land, and who made ready. Made ready that they might rise again in the barbaric days to come. As did I. Sleeping they lie, ancient kings and grim wizards, who died as men die, before Atlantis sank. Who, sleeping, sank with her but who shall arise again!

"Mine the glory! I rose first. And I sought out the site of old cities, on shores that did not sink. Vanished, long vanished. The barbarian tide swept over them thousands of years ago as the green waters swept over their elder sister of the deeps. On some, the deserts stretch bare. Over some, as here, young barbarian cities rise."

He halted suddenly. His eyes sought one of the dark openings that marked a corridor. I think his strange intuition warned him of some impending danger but I do not believe that he had any inkling of how dramatically our scene would be interrupted.

As he looked, swift footsteps sounded and a man appeared suddenly in the doorway—a man disheveled, tattered and bloody. John Gordon! Kathulos sprang erect with a cry, and Gordon, gasping as from superhuman exertion, brought down the revolver he held in his hand and fired point-blank. Kathulos staggered, clapping his hand to his breast, and then, groping wildly, reeled to the wall and fell against it. A doorway opened and he reeled through, but as Gordon leaped fiercely across the chamber, a blank stone surface met his gaze, which yielded not to his savage hammerings.

He whirled and ran drunkenly to the table where lay a bunch of keys the Master had dropped there.

"The vial!" I shrieked. "Take the vial!" And he thrust it into his pocket.

Back along the corridor through which he had come sounded a faint clamor growing swiftly like a wolf-pack in full cry. A few precious seconds spent with fumbling for the right key, then the cage door swung open and I sprang out. A sight for the gods we were, the two of us! Slashed, bruised and cut, our garments hanging in tatters—my wounds had ceased to bleed, but now as I moved they began again, and from the stiffness of my hands I knew that my knuckles were shattered. As for Gordon, he was fairly drenched in blood from crown to foot.

We made off down a passage in the opposite direction from the menacing noise, which I knew to be the black servants of the Master in full pursuit of us. Neither of us was in good shape for running, but we did our best. Where we were going I had no idea. My superhuman strength had deserted me and I was going now on willpower alone. We switched off into another corridor and we had not gone twenty steps until, looking back, I saw the first of the black devils round the corner.

A desperate effort increased our lead a trifle. But they had seen us, were in full view now, and a yell of fury broke from them to be succeeded by a more sinister silence as they bent all efforts to overhauling us.

There a short distance in front of us we saw a stair loom suddenly in the gloom. If we might reach that—but we saw something else.

Against the ceiling, between us and the stairs, hung a huge thing like an iron grille, with great spikes along the bottom—a portcullis. And even as we looked, without halting in our panting strides, it began to move.

"They're lowering the portcullis!" Gordon croaked, his blood-streaked face a mask of exhaustion and will.

Now the blacks were only ten feet behind us—now the huge grate, gaining momentum, with a creak of rusty, unused mechanism, rushed downward. A final spurt, a gasping straining nightmare of effort—and Gordon, sweeping us both along in a wild burst of pure nerve-strength, hurled us under and through, and the grate crashed behind us!

A moment we lay gasping, not heeding the frenzied horde who raved and screamed on the other side of the grate. So close had that final leap been, that the great spikes in their descent had torn shreds from our clothing.

The blacks were thrusting at us with daggers through the bars, but we were out of reach and it seemed to me that I was content to lie there and die of exhaustion. But Gordon weaved unsteadily erect and hauled me with him.

"Got to get out," he croaked; "go to warn—Scotland Yard— honeycombs in heart of London—high explosives—arms— ammunition."

We blundered up the steps, and in front of us I seemed to hear a sound of metal grating against metal. The stairs ended abruptly, on a landing that terminated in a blank wall. Gordon hammered against this and the inevitable secret doorway opened. Light streamed in, through the bars of a sort of grille. Men in the uniform of London police were sawing at these with hacksaws, and even as they greeted us, an opening was made through which we crawled.

"You're hurt, sir!" One of the men took Gordon's arm.

My companion shook him off.

"There's no time to lose! Out of here, as quick as we can go!"

I saw that we were in a basement of some sort. We hastened up the steps and out into the early dawn which was turning the east scarlet. Over the tops of smaller houses I saw in the distance a great gaunt building on the roof of which, I felt instinctively, that wild drama had been enacted the night before.

"That building was leased some months ago by a mysterious Chinaman," said Gordon, following my gaze. "Office building originally—the neighborhood deteriorated and the building stood vacant for some time. The new tenant added several stories to it but left it apparently empty. Had my eye on it for some time."

This was told in Gordon's jerky swift manner as we started hurriedly along the sidewalk. I listened mechanically, like a man in a trance. My vitality was ebbing fast and I knew that I was going to crumple at any moment.

"The people living in the vicinity had been reporting strange sights and noises. The man who owned the basement we just left heard queer sounds emanating from the wall of the basement and called the police. About that time I was racing back and forth among those cursed corridors like a hunted rat and I heard the police banging on the wall. I found the secret door and opened it but found it barred by a grating. It was while I was telling the astounded policemen to procure a hacksaw that the pursuing Negroes, whom I had eluded for the moment, came into sight and I was forced to shut the door and run for it again. By pure luck I found you and by pure luck managed to find the way back to the door.

"Now we must get to Scotland Yard. If we strike swiftly, we may capture the entire band of devils. Whether I killed Kathulos or not I do not know, or if he can be killed by mortal weapons. But to the best of my knowledge all of them are now in those subterranean corridors and—"

At that moment the world shook! A brain-shattering roar seemed to break the sky with its incredible detonation; houses tottered and crashed to ruins; a mighty pillar of smoke and flame burst from the earth and on its wings great masses of debris soared skyward. A black fog of smoke and dust and falling timbers enveloped the world, a prolonged thunder seemed to rumble up from the center of the earth as of walls and ceilings falling, and amid the uproar and the screaming I sank down and knew no more.

21. — THE BREAKING OF THE CHAIN

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"And like a soul belated,

In heaven and hell unmated;

By cloud and mist abated;

Come out of darkness morn."

—Swinburne

THERE is little need to linger on the scenes of horror of that terrible London morning. The world is familiar with and knows most of the details attendant to the great explosion which wiped out a tenth of that great city with a resultant loss of lives and property. For such a happening some reason must needs be given; the tale of the deserted building got out, and many wild stories were circulated. Finally, to still the rumors, the report was unofficially given out that this building had been the rendezvous and secret stronghold of a gang of international anarchists, who had stored its basement full of high explosives and who had supposedly ignited these accidentally. In a way there was a good deal to this tale, as you know, but the threat that had lurked there far transcended any anarchist.

All this was told to me, for when I sank unconscious, Gordon, attributing my condition to exhaustion and a need of the hashish to the use of which he thought I was addicted, lifted me and with the aid of the stunned policemen got me to his rooms before returning to the scene of the explosion. At his rooms he found Hansen, and Zuleika handcuffed to the bed as I had left her. He released her and left her to tend to me, for all London was in a terrible turmoil and he was needed elsewhere.

When I came to myself at last, I looked up into her starry eyes and lay quiet, smiling up at her. She sank down upon my bosom, nestling my head in her arms and covering my face with her kisses.

"Steephen!" she sobbed over and over, as her tears splashed hot on my face.

I was scarcely strong enough to put my arms about her but I managed it, and we lay there for a space, in silence, except for the girl's hard, racking sobs.

"Zuleika, I love you," I murmured.

"And I love you, Steephen," she sobbed. "Oh, it is so hard to part now —but I'm going with you, Steephen; I can't live without you!"

"My dear child," said John Gordon, entering the room suddenly, "Costigan's not going to die. We will let him have enough hashish to tide him along, and when he is stronger we will take him off the habit slowly."

"You don't understand, sahib; it is not hashish Steephen must have. It is something which only the Master knew, and now that he is dead or is fled, Steephen cannot get it and must die."

Gordon shot a quick, uncertain glance at me. His fine face was drawn and haggard, his clothes sooty and torn from his work among the debris of the explosion.

"She's right, Gordon," I said languidly. "I'm dying. Kathulos killed the hashish-craving with a concoction he called the elixir. I've been keeping myself alive on some of the stuff that Zuleika stole from him and gave me, but I drank it all last night."

I was aware of no craving of any kind, no physical or mental discomfort even. All my mechanism was slowing down fast; I had passed the stage where the need of the elixir would tear and rend me. I felt only a great lassitude and a desire to sleep. And I knew that the moment I closed my eyes, I would die.

"A strange dope, that elixir," I said with growing languor. "It burns and freezes and then at last the craving kills easily and without torment."

"Costigan, curse it," said Gordon desperately, "you can't go like this! That vial I took from the Egyptian's table—what is in it?"

"The Master swore it would free me of my curse and probably kill me also," I muttered. "I'd forgotten about it. Let me have it; it can no more than kill me and I'm dying now."

"Yes, quick, let me have it!" exclaimed Zuleika fiercely, springing to Gordon's side, her hands passionately outstretched. She returned with the vial which he had taken from his pocket, and knelt beside me, holding it to my lips, while she murmured to me gently and soothingly in her own language.

I drank, draining the vial, but feeling little interest in the whole matter. My outlook was purely impersonal, at such a low ebb was my life, and I cannot even remember how the stuff tasted. I only remember feeling a curious sluggish fire burn faintly along my veins, and the last thing I saw was Zuleika crouching over me, her great eyes fixed with a burning intensity on me. Her tense little hand rested inside her blouse, and remembering her vow to take her own life if I died I tried to lift a hand and disarm her, tried to tell Gordon to take away the dagger she had hidden in her garments. But speech and action failed me and I drifted away into a curious sea of unconsciousness.

Of that period I remember nothing. No sensation fired my sleeping brain to such an extent as to bridge the gulf over which I drifted. They say I lay like a dead man for hours, scarcely breathing, while Zuleika hovered over me, never leaving my side an instant, and fighting like a tigress when anyone tried to coax her away to rest. Her chain was broken.

As I had carried the vision of her into that dim land of nothingness, so her dear eyes were the first thing which greeted my returning consciousness. I was aware of a greater weakness than I thought possible for a man to feel, as if I had been an invalid for months, but the life in me, faint though it was, was sound and normal, caused by no artificial stimulation. I smiled up at my girl and murmured weakly:

"Throw away your dagger, little Zuleika; I'm going to live."

She screamed and fell on her knees beside me, weeping and laughing at the same time. Women are strange beings, of mixed and powerful emotions, truly.

Gordon entered and grasped the hand which I could not lift from the bed.

"You're a case for an ordinary human physician now, Costigan," he said. "Even a layman like myself can tell that. For the first time since I've known you, the look in your eyes is entirely sane. You look like a man who has had a complete nervous breakdown, and needs about a year of rest and quiet. Great heavens, man, you've been through enough, outside your dope experience, to last you a lifetime."

"Tell me first," said I, "was Kathulos killed in the explosion?"

"I don't know," answered Gordon somberly. "Apparently the entire system of subterranean passages was destroyed. I know my last bullet—the last bullet that was in the revolver which I wrested from one of my attackers —found its mark in the Master's body, but whether he died from the wound, or whether a bullet can hurt him, I do not know. And whether in his death agonies he ignited the tons and tons of high explosives which were stored in the corridors, or whether the Negroes did it unintentionally, we shall never know.

"My God, Costigan, did you ever see such a honeycomb? And we know not how many miles in either direction the passages reached. Even now Scotland Yard men are combing the subways and basements of the town for secret openings. All known openings, such as the one through which we came and the one in Soho 48, were blocked by falling walls. The office building was simply blown to atoms."

"What about the men who raided Soho 48?"

"The door in the library wall had been closed. They found the Chinaman you killed, but searched the house without avail. Lucky for them, too, else they had doubtless been in the tunnels when the explosion came, and perished with the hundreds of Negroes who must have died then."

"Every Negro in London must have been there."

"I dare say. Most of them are voodoo worshipers at heart and the power the Master wielded was incredible. They died, but what of him? Was he blown to atoms by the stuff which he had secretly stored, or crushed when the stone walls crumbled and the ceilings came thundering down?"

"There is no way to search among those subterranean ruins, I suppose?"

"None whatever. When the walls caved in, the tons of earth upheld by the ceilings also came crashing down, filling the corridors with dirt and broken stone, blocking them forever. And on the surface of the earth, the houses which the vibration shook down were heaped high in utter ruins. What happened in those terrible corridors must remain forever a mystery."

My tale draws to a close. The months that followed passed uneventfully, except for the growing happiness which to me was paradise, but which would bore you were I to relate it. But one day Gordon and I again discussed the mysterious happenings that had had their being under the grim hand of the Master.

"Since that day," said Gordon, "the world has been quiet. Africa has subsided and the East seems to have returned to her ancient sleep. There can be but one answer—living or dead, Kathulos was destroyed that morning when his world crashed about him."

"Gordon," said I, "what is the answer to that greatest of all mysteries?"

My friend shrugged his shoulders.

"I have come to believe that mankind eternally hovers on the brinks of secret oceans of which it knows nothing. Races have lived and vanished before our race rose out of the slime of the primitive, and it is likely still others will live upon the earth after ours has vanished. Scientists have long upheld the theory that the Atlanteans possessed a higher civilization than our own, and on very different lines. Certainly Kathulos himself was proof that our boasted culture and knowledge were nothing beside that of whatever fearful civilization produced him.

"His dealings with you alone have puzzled all the scientific world, for none of them has been able to explain how he could remove the hashish craving, stimulate you with a drug so infinitely more powerful, and then produce another drug which entirely effaced the effects of the other."

"I have him to thank for two things," I said slowly; "the regaining of my lost manhood—and Zuleika. Kathulos, then, is dead, as far as any mortal thing can die. But what of those others—those 'ancient masters' who still sleep in the sea?"

Gordon shuddered.

"As I said, perhaps mankind loiters on the brink of unthinkable chasms of horror. But a fleet of gunboats is even now patrolling the oceans unobtrusively, with orders to destroy instantly any strange case that may be found floating—to destroy it and its contents. And if my word has any weight with the English government and the nations of the world, the seas will be so patrolled until doomsday shall let down the curtain on the races of today."

"At night I dream of them, sometimes," I muttered, "sleeping in their lacquered cases, which drip with strange seaweed, far down among the green surges—where unholy spires and strange towers rise in the dark ocean."

"We have been face to face with an ancient horror," said Gordon somberly, "with a fear too dark and mysterious for the human brain to cope with. Fortune has been with us; she may not again favor the sons of men. It is best that we be ever on our guard. The universe was not made for humanity alone; life takes strange phases and it is the first instinct of nature for the different species to destroy each other. No doubt we seemed as horrible to the Master as he did to us. We have scarcely tapped the chest of secrets which nature has stored, and I shudder to think of what that chest may hold for the human race."

"That's true," said I, inwardly rejoicing at the vigor which was beginning to course through my wasted veins, "but men will meet obstacles as they come, as men have always risen to meet them. Now, I am beginning to know the full worth of life and love, and not all the devils from all the abysses can hold me."

Gordon smiled.

"You have it coming to you, old comrade. The best thing is to forget all that dark interlude, for in that course lies light and happiness."

THE END

Spicy Series:

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The 'Wild Bill Clanton' Saga:

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The Dragon of Kao Tsu

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THE girl who stormed the back room of the Purple Dragon Bar where Wild Bill Clanton sat sipping a whiskey-and-soda, looked out of place in that dive. She advertised her place in the social register from her insolently tilted beret to her high French heels. She was tall and slender, but all her lines were supple and rounded, with melting curves that would make any man's blood run faster. Just now her purplish eyes flashed and her pertly-tilted breasts swelled stormily.

"You," she accused Clanton, "are a thief, a liar, and a rat!"

"So what?" he returned unimpressed, as he poured another drink.

"Why, you lowlifed—!" Her refinement skidded a trifle in her resentment, and she began sketching his genealogy with language she never learned in the Junior League. He interrupted her peremptorily.

"Now you hold on! Some things nobody can call me, not even a lady! Sit down and cool off before somethin' unpleasant happens to you!"

She wilted at the threat and drooped into the chair opposite him.

"This," she said bitterly, "is what I get for associating with a gorilla like you. Why I do it, I don't know."

"I know," he retorted. "Because you wanted Shareef Ahmed's ivory dragon and I was the only man who could get it for you."

"Yes, you were!" There was rancor in her tone, and her basilisk glare made him uneasy. You never could tell about these society dames! If she yanked a knife out of her garter, he meant to smack her down.

But she had no knife in her garter, as he could tell when she crossed her silk-clad legs with the regal indifference of a true aristocrat. She twitched down her skirt an inch or so, but not before he had a glimpse of white skin that made the blood boil to his head. Her indifference to his emotions was maddening.

Probably it had never occurred to Old Man Allison's pampered daughter Marianne that a man on Clanton's social plane would even think of making a pass at her, but he had to clench his hands to keep them off of her.

"What's eatin' you?" he demanded.

For answer she produced something from her handbag and smacked it down accusingly before him. It was a small, pot-bellied ivory dragon, exquisitely carved and yellowed with age.

"It's a fake!" she declared.

"It's the one Ram Lal stole from Shareef Ahmed," he asserted.

"It's a fake," she contended moodily. "Either you've gyped me, or that babu you hired to do the job has, or Ahmed's fooled us all."

"Well, what of it?" he asked. "All you want it for is to show to your society friends back in the United States and brag about it bein' a rare antique. They won't know the difference."

"Some of them will," she answered, lighting a cigarette with an injured air. "The collection of Oriental antiques is a great hobby in my set. It's been a game to see who could get the rarest relic by fair means or foul. Betty Elston got hold of a priceless Ming vase in Canton, and she's gloated over the rest of us until I've wanted to kick her little—well, anyway, I heard about the Kao Tsu dragon in San Francisco, and I came all the way to Singapore to get it. It dates from the Early Han Dynasty, and it's the only one of its kind in the world. I knew Ahmed wouldn't sell it, so I hired you to have it stolen for me."

Clanton picked up the yellowed figure and turned it about.

"I dunno," he mused. "Ram Lal got into Ahmed's house and swiped this. He's the slickest thief on the Peninsula. But if it's the wrong one, he might be afraid to risk another try. Ahmed's bad business."

"But he's been paid, and it isn't the right dragon!" she snapped. "What kind of a man would he be to take money under false pretences?"

"Hire a thief and then squawk if he gyps you!" he mocked her. "But keep your shirt on. I'm a man of my word, anyway. I've taken your dough, and I aim to deliver the goods. Ram Lal's so scared of Ahmed he's hidin' in an old warehouse down on the waterfront. Maybe he just got the wrong dragon by mistake. Or he may be holdin' out on us for more dough. You leave this thing with me, and tonight I'll go down there and talk to him. If he's on the level, maybe he'll try again. If he's tryin' to put somethin' over, well, we'll see."

"I'm going with you," she decided. "I don't trust either of you."

"It's no place for a white woman," he warned her.

She tilted a scornful nose.

"I can take care of myself, Mister Clanton—otherwise I'd never have dared to have any dealings with you! I'll pick you up near the mosque on Muscat Street. And I don't want to have to drag you out from under some table, or away from some brown-skinned wench, either."

"I'll be there, sober and respectable," he assured her. "But how about a little drink before you go?"

"No, thanks!" she declined. "I prefer to keep our relationship on a strictly business basis; and whiskey gives men ideas. I'll see you at dusk."

And she swung out of the room with a long-legged, hip-swaying gait that made Clanton moan with despair and grab the whiskey bottle. She had him buffaloed. If she'd been anybody else, he'd have made a pass at her, regardless. But there was a limit even to his audacity, and he didn't dare try any rough stuff on the daughter of Old Man Allison, millionaire and woolly wolf of finance that the old devil was.

He turned the ivory dragon about in bis hands and frowned.

"Antique collectin', eh? Hokum!"

RISING, he bellowed to a half-caste waiter, plunked a coin on the table and barged out of a side door. A few moments later he was seated in a silk shop kept by one Yakub, an old Jew who had a finger in many enterprises besides the one advertised by the sign over his door, and whose ear was always close to the mysterious pulse of the East. Clanton set the ivory dragon before him and demanded: "What's that?"

Yakub donned square, steel-rimmed spectacles, and regarded it.

"That's the Kao Tsu dragon," he said. "But I wouldn't handle it for you. You must have stolen it from Shareef Ahmed. I love life too much to handle anything stolen from that devil."

"It's a fake," asserted Clanton.

"If it's a fake, I'm a Gentile." answered old Yakub, lovingly fondling its smooth surface. "Tchk, tchk! Such a pity! I'd buy it myself if I weren't afraid of Ahmed. He'll slit your throat for this, sure."

"You'll swear it's genuine?" Clanton demanded.

"My head on it!" The old man's sincerity was convincing.

"Hmmm!" Clanton's scowl deepened. "I wonder what that hussy's tryin' to put over?"

Then he asked Yakub a strange question, and received a stranger answer.

IF Marianne Allison had known of that conversation, her poise might have been a trifle less confident when her big coupé purred up to the curb where Clanton stood, just as the street lights were coming on. He climbed in beside her and she turned off down a side-street according to his directions.

"Did you bring any money, in case Ram Lal wants more?" he asked.

"I should say not!" she retorted. "He's been paid enough. He owes me any future service it takes to get the right dragon."

"You're an arrogant wench," he observed, his eyes glued on a rounded knee. Through accident or design her dress had worked up again, baring an inch of white skin above the stocking-top.

"When you get through inspecting my leg," she suggested, "you might tell me which way to turn at this next intersection."

She smiled cruelly as he reluctantly turned his attention to the street. Feeling perfectly safe from him, she took a feminine delight in tantalizing him. She was aware of her effect on him, and she enjoyed seeing the veins in his forehead swell with frustrated emotion.

"Pull up here." he directed presently, and they rolled to a halt in a shabby side-street in the native quarter. "I have to leave the boat here. They may steal the wheels off of it before we get back, but it won't navigate the alley we've got to follow. Here, this is it."

It was dark in the alley. They groped their way along and presently came out into an open space, lined on one side by rotten, deserted wharves.

"That's the warehouse." Clanton indicated a building looming darkly before them. "He's got a camp-cot and some canned grub in one of the lower rooms, and he aims to hide there till I let him know what move Ahmed's making about that theft."

NO LIGHT showed behind the shutters of the barred windows. Clanton knocked and softly called: "Ram Lal!" No answer, he tried the door and found it to be unlocked. He pushed it open and Marianne pressed close on his heels as he entered. She jumped and grabbed his arm as they stood in the darkness.

"The door! Somebody pushed it to behind us!"

"Wind must have blown it shut," he grunted. "But where the hell's Ram Lal?"

"Listen!" She clutched him convulsively. Somewhere in the darkness sounded a steady drip-drip as if somebody had left a faucet partly open. But Clanton's hair began to rise, because be knew there wasn't any faucet in that room. He struck a match in a hurry and held it up. Marianne clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a shriek. Clanton swore. In the wavering light they saw Ram Lal. The fat, swarthy babu slumped drunkenly in a chair near a table. His head lolled on his breast and his eyes were glassy. And from a throat slashed from ear to car, blood still oozed sluggishly to fall drop by drop in a widening crimson puddle on the floor.

"God almighty!" muttered Clanton. "We've got to get out of here—ow!"

Something that glinted swished at him out of the shadows. Marianne had a brief glimpse of an arc of gleaming steel and a dark contorted face behind it. Then the match went out, clipped from Clanton's hand by that slashing blade, and the dark filled with hair-raising sounds. Marianne dropped to the floor and scurried on all-fours in the direction she hoped the door was. She'd lost touch with Clanton, but he couldn't be dead, because no corpse could put up the fight he was putting up.

Lurid Anglo-Saxon oaths mingled with Asiatic yowls, and she almost pitied his adversaries as she heard what sounded like beeves being knocked in the head with a maul, but which she knew to be the impact of his massive fists on human skulls. Howls of pain and rage filled the room, the table overturned crashingly, and then somebody stumbled over her in the dark.

It was a Malay. She could tell by the smell, even in the dark. She heard him floundering on the floor near her, and her blood froze at the wheep- wheep of a keen blade being whirled at random. It was close behind her, and the flesh of her hips contracted as she scuttled away on her all-fours. Her groping hands found a door and pulled it open, but no light came in, and she felt steps leading upward. But any avenue of escape from that blind blade flailing the blackness was welcome.

She shut the door behind her and went up the stair as fast as she could and eventually emerged into an equally dark space that felt big and empty and smelled musty. There she crouched, shivering, while the noise of battle went on below, until it culminated in an amazing crash that sounded as though somebody had been knocked bodily through a closed door. Then the sounds died away and silence reigned. She believed that Clanton had broken away from his attackers and fled, pursued by them.

She was right. At that moment Clanton was racing down a winding alley, hearing the pad of swift feet close behind him, and momentarily expecting a knife thrust in the back. They were too many for even him to fight with his bare hands, and they were gaining on him. With a straining burst of effort he reached an empty, dim-lit side-street ahead of them, and before he vanished into an entrance on the other side, he cast something on the paving in the light of the dim street-lamp.

Startled yelps escaped his pursuers, and abandoning the chase, they pounced on the yellowed ivory dragon Clanton had discarded.

Back in the loft of the deserted warehouse Marianne crept down the stairs. For some time she had heard no sound below. Then just as she reached the stair-door, she checked, her heart in her throat. Somebody had entered the room beyond. But this man wore the boots of a white man; she could tell by his footfalls. Then she heard a smothered, English oath.

Clanton must have eluded his pursuers and returned. She heard a match struck, and light stole through the crack under the door. She pushed the door ajar. A brawny figure, wearing a seaman's cap, with his back to the door, was bending over the corpse slumped in the chair.

"Clanton!" she exclaimed, stepping into the room—then checked in her tracks as a perfect stranger whirled around with an oath. He was as big as Clanton and much uglier. His bloodshot eyes glared, his black beard bristled, and he levelled a snub-nosed revolver at her quivering tummy.

"Don't shoot!" she gasped. "I—I won't hurt you!"

The stranger's reply was unprintable. Evidently her sudden appearance had given him a bad shock.

"Who the blinkin' hell are you and what're you doin' here?" he concluded. "Well, talk before I start sweepin' the floor with you!" He flourished a fist the size of a breakfast ham under her shrinking nose.

She shuddered and spoke hastily: "I lost my way and wandered in here by mistake—I've got to go now—glad to have met you—"

"Stow it!" bellowed the irate intruder. "You can't pull the wool over Bull Davies' eyes like that!" The aforesaid eyes narrowed wickedly in the light of the candle on a wall-shelf. "Oh, I get it!" he muttered. "Of course! You're after the dragon yourself! You killed Ram Lal to get it! Well, hand it over and you won't get hurt—maybe!"

"I haven't got it," she answered. "And I didn't kill Ram Lal. Shareef Ahmed's men did that. They were waiting in the dark when I and my companion came in here. I don't know where they went, or what happened to the man with me."

"Likely yarn," grumbled Mr. Davies. "Ram Lal knew my boss wanted the dragon. He sent me word to come here tonight and make him an offer. He'd stole it from Shareef Ahmed. I just now got here, and found him dead and the dragon gone. It ain't on him—it must be on you!" He pointed a hairy and accusing finger at Marianne.

"I tell you I haven't got it!" she exclaimed, paling. "I want it, yes! If you'll help me find it. I'll pay you—"

"I've already been paid," he growled. "And my boss would cut my throat if I sold him out. You've got that dragon on you somewheres! You dames are smart about hidin' things on you! Off with them clothes!"

"No!" She jumped back, but he grabbed her wrist and twisted it until she fell to her knees with a yelp of pain.

"Are you goin' to shed 'em yourself, or do I have to tear 'em off?" he rumbled. "If I have to, it'll be the worse for you, blast you!"

"Let me up," she begged. "I know when I'm licked. I'll do it."

AND under his piglike eyes she shed garment after garment until she stood before him clad only in a scanty brassiere and ridiculously brief pink panties. As she discarded each garment, he snatched it and ransacked it, snarling his anger at finding his quest fruitless. Now be glared at her, silent and wrathful, and she squirmed and made protecting motions with her hands. Red fires that were not of rage began to glimmer murkily in his blood-shot eyes.

"Isn't this enough?" she begged. "You could see if I had anything on me the size of that dragon."

"Well, maybe," he admitted grudgingly, laying a heavy hand on her naked shoulder and turning her about to inspect her from every angle.

"Baby, you've got what it takes!" he muttered thickly, clapping a hot. sweaty hand down on her smooth back. "No, it's easy to see you ain't got that dragon hid on you." He grinned wickedly as one hand started to move lower. She shrieked and slapped him resoundingly, and instantly regretted her indiscretion. He grabbed her in a bear-like embrace and his ardor wasn't lessened a bit by the glassy stare of the dead man in the chair.

He was carrying her, squirming and fighting, toward the camp-cot in the corner when he stiffened.

Outside the door sounded a faint babble of approaching voices. He blew out the candle and turned through an inner door, clapping a big paw over Marianne's mouth when she tried to scream, and hissing: "Shut up, you little fool! Do you want your throat cut? That's Ahmed's men!"

He seemed to know his way about the warehouse, even in the dark. He stooped, fumbled at the floor, raised a trap-door, whispered: "If I hear one peep out of you, I'll come down there and twist your head off! I'll get you out later—if you're a good girl!"—and dropped her.

SHE was too scared to yell, even if she'd had breath for it. She did not fall far till she hit on her feet on a slimy floor. She heard the trap-door settle back in place, and then the creak of the stairs. Evidently Davies was taking refuge in the loft. She thought she heard an outer door open, and a mumble of voices, but forgot it the next instant at the sight of small red eyes winking fiercely at her from the gloom. Rats!

She had all a woman's natural fear of rodents, and she had heard horrifying tales about the ghoulish wharf-rats. But they made no move to attack her and she began to explore her prison, shivering in her near nudity. The stone floor stood in several inches of water, and she found no opening in the slimy walls. She had been dumped into a cellar and the only way out was up through that trapdoor above her head.

She squealed as a rat ran across her foot, and jumped back against the wall, bruising her hip and tearing her panties on a broken plank.

"This is what I get for associating with people like Bill Clanton," she told herself bitterly, and then the rats started fighting in a corner. Their hideous racket snapped her taut nerves. She screamed. She yelled. She was too panicky to care for Davies' threat. Having her head twisted off seemed preferable to bring devoured by rats in in that black well. She didn't care who heard her, just so somebody did, and got her out of that damnable cellar. She didn't care much what they did to her afterward.

And almost instantly her shrieks were answered by sounds overhead. The trap was lifted and she blinked in the glare of a lantern. But it was not Davies' bearded face which was framed in the opening. It was a dark, saturnine, handsome face—the face of Sharref Ahmed!

"Well, our little guest didn't run away, after all!" he commented satirically. "Help her up, Jum Chin."

A tall, gaunt Chinese reached his long arms down, caught her lifted wrists and swung her up lightly and easily. The trap-door fell again and she found herself standing before Ahmed, whose dark eyes devoured her from head to foot. Four Malays with krises in their belts together with the Chinaman feasted their hot eyes on her semi-nudity. They were marked generously from Clanton's fists, from that fight in the dark room.

"A curious interlude!" smiled Ahmed dangerously. "You enter the building fully clothed, with that dog Clanton. Apparently you escape in the mêlée. But less than an hour later we find you imprisoned in the cellar, half-naked! His eyes went to the white hip exposed by the accident. She flinched, but did not reply nor resent the indignity. She was scared as only a girl can be who knows herself to be in the power of men absolutely merciless and cynical in their attitude toward women.

"Where is the Kao Tsu dragon?" Ahmed demanded peremptorily.

"I haven't got it!" Her wits were working like lightning on a scheme.

Ahmed's eyes were poisonous.

"You must have it! Ram Lal stole two dragons out of my house. Clanton dropped one in his flight." He displayed it. "But it is not the right one. You must have it. Ram Lal must have stolen them for you, otherwise Clanton, who came here with you, would not have had this one. You have the other, or know where it is. Must you be persuaded to talk?"

"I had it," she said hurriedly, as the Malays moved toward her, grinning evilly. "But Bull Davies came while you were chasing Clanton—"

"Davies?" It was a snarl from Ahmed. "Has that dog of General Kai's been here?"

"He is here—hiding upstairs. He took the dragon from me."

"Search the upper floor," snapped Ahmed, and his men made for the stair, soft-footed as weasels, with naked blades glimmering in their hands. Marianne breathed in momentary relief. At least she'd saved herself from torture for the moment. Ahmed was watching the stair, and she essayed a sneaking step toward the other door. But he wheeled and caught her wrist.

"Where are you going? Nowhere, apparently."

She flinched at his sarcasm. "Please, you're hurting my wrist. Why, the body's gone!"

"We threw it in the river after we returned from pursuing Clanton," said Ahmed absently, gazing at her half-exposed breasts. "I meant to take Ram Lal alive and make him talk. But he attacked my faithful servant, Jum Chin, who traced him here, and Jum Chin was forced to kill him. I arrived with the rest of my men just after he had killed Ram Lal. We had just completed a fruitless search of the body when we heard you and Clanton approaching. Why did you come here when you already had the dragon?"

"I came to pay Ram Lal," she lied, afraid to admit the truth, now that she had already professed to have had possession of the dragon.

"Forget the dragon for a space," he muttered; his eyes were like flames licking her sleek body. "My men will capture Davies and get it for me. Meanwhile—you and I..."

Realizing his intentions she sprang for the nearest door, but he was too quick for her. He was slender but his thews were like steel. She yelped as he reached for her—squealed despairingly as she realized how helpless she was. She clenched a small fist and struck him in the face, and in return got a slap that filled her eyes with stars and tears. He picked her up, fighting and kicking, and started toward the other room with her, when upstairs a shot banged, blows thudded, men yelled and heavy boots stampeded down the stair.

Ahmed dropped Marianne sprawling on the floor and turned to the stair door, drawing a pistol. An instant later Bull Davies, plunging through the stair-s, brought up short at the threat of that black muzzle. In an instant the five Orientals who were tumbling down the stair after him had fallen on him from behind, borne him to the floor, and had him bound hand and foot. Swift hands ransacked his garments, and then Jum Chin looked at Ahmed and shook his head. Ahmed turned on Marianne, who rose from the floor, rubbing her hip.

"You slut! You said he had it!" Ahmed grabbed a pink-white shoulder and squeezed viciously.

"Wait!" she begged, assuming a Venus de'Medici pose as he started to go even further in his third-degree methods. "He must have hidden it!"

This was going to be just too bad for Davies, she knew, but it was his hide or hers. Maybe she'd get a chance to slip away while they were giving him the works.

At a word from Ahmed. Jum Chin slipped Davies' shirt off. A Malay applied a lighted match to his hairy breast. A faint smell of singed hair arose and Davies bellowed like a bull.

"I tell you I ain't got it! She's lyin'! I dunno where it is!"

"If he's lying, we'll soon know," rasped Ahmed. "We'll try a test that will unlock the jaws of the stubbornest. If he still persists, we must conclude that he's telling the truth, and the girl's lying."

Jum Chin stripped off the prisoner's socks, and Davies broke into a sweat of fear. Intent on the coming torture, Ahmed relaxed his grip on Marianne's wrist—or maybe it was a trick to trap her into a false move.

As his fingers relaxed, she jerked loose and darted into the outer room. He was after her in an instant, and just as she reached the door that opened into the alley, his fingers locked in her hair. But that door burst suddenly inward.

A BIG form loomed in the door and an arm shot out. There was a crack that sounded as if Ahmed had run his face into a brick wall. But it was a massive fist he had run into, and the impact stretched him groaning on the floor. His conqueror swooped on the pistol that flew from his victim's hand, and Ahmed's henchmen, rushing from the inner room, checked at the menace of the leveled Luger, their hands shooting ceilingward.

"Clanton!" panted Marianne. He refused to look at her. With six desperate men before him, he couldn't risk being demoralized by the spectacle of loveliness her unclad figure presented.

"Put on some clothes!" he snapped. "And you, Ahmed, get up!"

Ahmed staggered up, a ghastly sight, minus three teeth and with his nose a gory ruin. Clanton grinned pridefully at the sight of his handiwork; few men could have done so much damage with only one clout. He profanely silenced Ahmed's impassioned ravings, and backed all his prisoners into the inner room, whither Marianne followed, having salvaged the table cloth which she wrapped rather sketchily, sarong-fashion, about her.

Briefly she explained the situation to Clanton, and he ordered the men to lie on their bellies and put their hands behind them, while she tied their wrists and ankles with their belts and turbans. He watched her in ecstatic silence while she was thus employed. The improvised sarong was something more than revealing, as she moved about, allowing glimpses of sweet contours that sent the blood to his head.

When she had finished the job, he inspected each man, grunting his approval of her technique, and searching them for weapons. He lingered longer over Jum Chin, and when he rose, she was amazed to see a grey pallor tinging the Chinaman's face. Yet Clanton had done nothing to hurt him.

Clanton then untied Davies, and growled: "I ought to bust your snoot for pullin' off Miss Allison's clothes and throwin' her in that cellar, but I'm lettin' you off, considerin' what Ahmed did to you. Get out!"

"I'll get even with somebody, I bet!" sniveled Mr. Davies, and departed hastily, aided in his exit by the toe of the Clanton boot. When his lamentations had faded in the night, Clanton addressed his glowering prisoners.

"We're leaving. I'll send back a coolie to untie you. Ahmed, you better forget what's happened tonight. The dragon's gone. Only Ram Lal knew what became of it, and he's dead. And if the British find out you killed him, they'll hang you, sure as hell! You let us alone, and keep your mouth shut, and we'll keep ours shut."

Fear gleamed in Ahmed's one good eye at the mention of hanging. He was sullenly silent as Clanton followed the girl into the outer room and closed the door behind them.

"Do you think he'll drop the matter?" she asked nervously. "I can't afford to have this story get in the papers."

"No, you can't," he agreed. "Theft, murder, torture, bribin' a thief like Ram Lal and a pirate like me—it would ruin any débutante. Best thing you can do is to get out of Singapore as quick as you can. Ahmed won't forget this. He'll work under cover to get us, if he can. I ain't afraid of him, but you better take the first ship back to the U.S.A."

"But I've got to have that dragon!" She was almost frantic.

Then her eyes dilated as he took something from his pocket—an ivory dragon, not so yellow nor so exquisite as the other she had seen.

"The Kao Tsu dragon!" She snatched at it, but he withheld it.

"You wait a minute!" He fumbled with the pot-belly for a moment, and then a section of it swung open. He drew out a strip of parchment, which had been rolled in the interior. One end remained fastened in the belly. The parchment was covered with tiny Chinese characters.

"Then you knew!" She was considerably agitated.

"I knew you wasn't any art collector, and I found out that the dragon Ram Lal gave me for you was the genuine Kao Tsu. So I did some sleuthin' and found out plenty. You wanted this for your old man, and he sent you after it because you're smarter than anybody workin' for him.

"That writin' is an agreement signed by the Chinese war-lord they call General Kai, givin' your old man an option on an important oil concession. He gave it to your old man a few years ago, in a moment of generosity, and like a Chinaman, rigged the agreement up in the belly of this dragon, which is a clever copy of the original Kao Tsu. Your old man thought all the time it was the Kao Tsu, and that's what you come after.

"Because a few months ago your old man decided to develop that concession so's to recoup his stock market losses, but General Kai had changed his mind. He wanted to give that concession to another firm. But if he refused, in the teeth of his own signed agreement, he'd lose face. So he had it stolen from your old man, meanin' to destroy the agreement and then claim he never made it, but Shareef Ahmed, who don't overlook many bets, had it stolen from Kai's agent. He already had the original Kao Tsu.

"Then Ahmed offered it to the highest bidder. Your old man had lost so much money in the stock market crash he was afraid General Kai would outbid him, so he sent you to steal it. General Kai also had his agents after it, Bull Davies bein' one of 'em. Ram Lal stole both dragons. He gave you the real Kao Tsu, but he kept the one with the contract in it, and was goin' to sell it to General Kai's agent. You know the rest."

"But the dragon—" she exclaimed bewilderedly. "That one, I mean!"

"Easy!" he grinned. "Jum Chin had it all the time. He killed Ram Lal and must have found the dragon on him before Ahmed got there. Ahmed trusts Jum Chin so it didn't occur to him to suspect him. An Arab's no match for a Chinaman in wits. I found it on Jum Chin when I searched him. He won't dare tell Ahmed we've got it because that'd betray his own treachery. I sneaked back when they quit chasin' me and was waitin' outside for a break. Well, I got it."

"Give the dragon to me!" she exclaimed. "It's mine! I paid you!"

"You paid me for the genuine Kao Tsu," he said, his eyes devouring a sleek thigh the sarong left bare. "You got it. This comes extra."

"How much?" she demanded sulkily.

"Money ain't everything," he suggested.

Suddenly she smiled meltingly and came up to him, laying a slender hand on his arm. Her nearness made him dizzy, and she did not resist as he passed an arm about her waist.

"I understand," she breathed. "You win. Give me the dragon first, though."

Trustingly he placed it in her hand—and quick as a cat she plucked the pistol from his belt and smashed him over the head with the barrel. The next instant she was streaking for the door. But she underestimated the strength of his skull. To her dismay he did not fall. He staggered with a gasping curse, then righted himself and leaped after her. He caught her as she grasped the knob, slapped the pistol out of her hand and spun her back into the room, crushing her wrists in one hand as she tried to claw his eyes out.

"You little cheat!" he snarled. "You've never kept a bargain yet! Well, you're goin' to keep this one! You've got what you want, and I'm goin' to get what I want! And you can't squawk, because you can't have the world knowin' about this night's work!"

Knowledge that this was true pepped up her struggles, but to her dismay she found them useless against the strength of her irate captor. All her kicking and squirming accomplished was to disarrange the sarong, and he caught his breath at the sight of all the pink and white curves displayed.

"You don't dare!" she gasped, as he drew her roughly to him. "You don't dare—"

Bill Clanton didn't even bother to reply to her ridiculous assertion...

IT WAS some time later when he grinned at her philosophically. He stooped and kissed her pouting mouth.

"Maybe that'll teach you not to associate with people like me," he said.

Her reply was unprintable, but the look in her eyes contradicted her words as she took his arm and together they went out to the street.

THE END

The Purple Heart of Erlik

Table of Contents

"YOU'LL do what I tell you—or else!" Duke Tremayne smiled cruelly as he delivered his ultimatum. Across the table from him Arline Ellis clenched her white hands in helpless rage. Duke Tremayne, world adventurer, was tall, slim, darkly mustached, handsome in a ruthless way; and many women looked on him with favor. But Arline hated him, with as good reason as she feared him.

But she ventured a flare of rebellion.

"I won't do it! It's too risky!"

"Not half as risky as defying me!" he reminded her. "I've got you by the seat of your pretty pants, my dear. How would you like to have me tell the police why you left Canton in such a hurry? Or tell them my version of that night in Baron Takayami's apartment—"

"Hush!" she begged. She was trembling as she glanced fearfully about the little curtained alcove in which they sat. It was well off the main floor of the Bordeaux Cabaret; even the music from the native orchestra came only faintly to their ears. They were alone, but the words he had just spoken were dynamite, not even safe for empty walls to hear.

"You know I didn't kill him—"

"So you say. But who'd believe you if I swore I saw you do it?"

She bent her head in defeat. This was the price she must pay for an hour of folly. In Canton she had been indiscreet enough to visit the apartments of a certain important Japanese official. It had been only the harmless escapade of a thrill-hunting girl.

She had found more thrills than she wanted, when the official had been murdered, almost before her eyes, by his servant, who she was sure was a Russian spy. The murderer had fled, and so had she, but not before she had been seen leaving the house by Duke Tremayne, a friend of the slain official. He had kept silent. But the murderer had taken important documents with him in his flight, and there was hell to pay in diplomatic circles.

It had been an international episode, that almost set the big guns of war roaring in the East. The murder and theft remained an unsolved mystery to the world at large, a wound that still rankled in the capitals of the Orient.

Arline had fled the city in a panic, realizing she could never prove her innocence, if connected with the affair. Tremayne had followed her to Shanghai and laid his cards on the table. If she did not comply with his wishes, he'd go to the police and swear he saw her murder the Jap. And she knew his testimony would send her to a firing squad, for various governments were eager for a scape-goat with which to conciliate the wrathful Nipponese.

Terrified, Arline submitted to the blackmail. And now Tremayne had told her the price of his silence. It was not what she had expected, though, from the look in his eyes as he devoured her trim figure from blonde hair to French heels, she felt it would come to that eventually. But here in the Bordeaux, a shady rendezvous in the shadowy borderland between the European and the native quarters, he had set her a task that made her flesh crawl.

He had commanded her to steal the famous Heart of Erlik, the purple ruby belonging to Woon Yuen, a Chinese merchant of powerful and sinister connections.

"So many men have tried," she argued. "How can I hope to succeed? I'll be found floating in the Yangtze with my throat cut, just as they were."

"You'll succeed," he retorted. "They tried force or craft; we'll use a woman's strategy. I've learned where he keeps it—had a spy working in his employ and he learned that much. He keeps it in a wall safe that looks like a dragon's head, in the inner chamber of his antique shop, where he keeps his rarest goods, and where he never admits anybody but wealthy women collectors. He entertains them there alone, which makes it easy."

"But how am I going to steal it, with him in there with me?"

"Easy!" he snapped. "He always serves his guests tea. You watch your chance and drop this knock-out pill in his tea."

He pressed a tiny, faintly odorous sphere into her hand.

"He'll go out like a candle. Then you open the safe, take the ruby and skip. It's like taking candy from a baby. One reason I picked you for this job, you have a natural gift for unraveling Chinese puzzles. The safe doesn't have a dial. You press the dragon's teeth. In what combination, I don't know. That's for you to find out."

"But how am I going to get into the inner chamber?" she demanded.

"That's the cream of the scheme," he assured her. "Did you ever hear of Lady Elizabeth Willoughby? Well, every antique dealer in the Orient knows her by sight or reputation. She's never been to Shanghai, though, and I don't believe Woon Yuen ever saw her. That'll make it easy to fool him. She's a young English woman with exotic ideas and she spends her time wandering around the world collecting rare Oriental art treasures. She's worth millions, and she's a free spender.

"Well, you look enough like her in a general way to fit in with any description Woon Yuen's likely to have heard. You're about the same height, same color of hair and eyes, same kind of figure—" his eyes lit with admiration as they dwelt on the trim curves of bosom and hips. "And you can act, too. You can put on an English accent that would fool the Prince of Wales, and act the high-born lady to a queen's taste.

"I've seen Lady Elizabeth's cards, and before I left Canton I had one made, to match. You see I had this in mind, even then." He passed her a curious slip of paper-thin jade, carved with scrawling Chinese characters.

"Her name, of course, in Chinese. She spends a small fortune on cards like that, alone. Now go back to your apartment and change into the duds I had sent up there—scarlet silk dress, jade-green hat, slippers with ivory heels, and a jade brooch. That's the way Lady Elizabeth always dresses. Eccentric? You said it! Go to Woon Yuen's shop and tell him you want to see the ivory Bon. He keeps it in the inner chamber. When you get in there, do your stuff, but be careful! They say Woon Yuen worships that ruby, and burns incense to it. But you'll pull the wool over his eyes, all right. Be careful he doesn't fall for youl Couldn't blame him if he did."

He was leaning toward her, and his hand was on her knee. She flinched at the feel of his questing fingers. She loathed his caresses, but she dared not repulse him. He was arrogantly possessive, and she did not doubt that when—and if—she returned with the coveted gem, he would demand the ultimate surrender. And she knew she would not dare refuse him. Tears of helpless misery welled to her eyes, but he ignored them. Grudgingly he withdrew his hand and rose.

"Go out by the back way. When you get the ruby, meet me at room Number 7, in the Alley of Rats—you know the place. Shanghai will be too hot for you, and we'll have to get you out of town in a hurry. And remember, sweetheart," his voice grew hard as his predatory eyes, and his arm about her waist was more a threat than a caress, "if you double-cross me, or if you flop on this job, I'll see you stood before a Jap firing squad if it's the last thing I do. I won't accept any excuses, either. Get me?"

His fingers brushed her chin, trailed over the soft white curve of her throat, to her shoulder; and as he voiced his threat, he dug them in like talons, emphasizing his command with a brutality that made Arline bite her lip to keep from crying out with pain.

"Yes, I get you."

"All right. Get going." He spanked her lightly and pushed her toward a door opposite the curtained entrance beyond which the music blared.

The door opened into a long narrow alley that eventually reached the street. As Arline went down this alley, seething with rebellion and dismay for the task ahead of her, a man stepped from a doorway and stopped her. She eyed him suspiciously, though concealing a secret throb of admiration for a fine masculine figure.

He was big, broad-shouldered, heavy-fisted, with smoldering blue eyes and a mop of unruly black hair under a side-tilted seaman's cap. And he was Wild Bill Clanton, sailor, gun-runner, blackbirder, pearl-poacher, and fighting man de luxe.

"Will you get out of my way?" she demanded.

"Wait a minute, Kid!" He barred her way with a heavy arm, and his eyes blazed as they ran over the smooth bland curves of her blond loveliness. "Why do you always give me the shoulder? I've made it a point to run into you in a dozen ports, and you always act like I had the plague."

"You have, as far as I'm concerned," she retorted.

"You seem to think Duke Tremayne's healthy," he growled resentfully.

She flinched at the name of her master, but answered spiritedly: "What I see in Duke Tremayne's none of your business. Now let me pass!"

But instead he caught her arm in a grip that hurt.

"Damn your saucy little soul!" he ripped out, anger fighting with fierce desire in his eyes. "If I didn't want you so bad, I'd smack your ears back! What the hell! I'm as good a man as Duke Tremayne. I'm tired of your superior airs. I came to Shanghai just because I heard you were here. Now are you going to be nice, or do I have to get rough?"

"You wouldn't dare!" she exclaimed. "I'll scream—"

A big hand clapped over her mouth put a stop to that.

"Nobody interferes with anything that goes on in alleys behind dumps like the Bordeaux," he growled, imprisoning her arms and lifting her off her feet, kicking and struggling. "Any woman caught here's fair prey."

He kicked open the door through which he had reached the alley, and carried Arline into a dim hallway. Traversing this with his writhing captive, he shoved open a door that opened on it. Arline, crushed against his broad breast, felt the tumultuous pounding of his heart, and experienced a momentary thrill of vanity that she should rouse such stormy emotion in Wild Bill Clanton, whose exploits with the women of a hundred ports were as widely celebrated as his myriad bloody battles with men.

He entered a bare, cobwebby room, and set her on her feet, placing his back against the door.

"Let me out of here, you beast!" She kicked his shins vigorously.

He ignored her attack.

"Why don't you be nice?" he begged. "I don't want to be rough with you. Honest, kid, I'd be good to you—better than Tremayne probably is—"

For answer she bent her blonde head and bit his wrist viciously, even though discretion warned her it was probably the worst thing she could do.

"You little devil!" he swore, grabbing her. "That settles it!"

Scornful of her resistance he crushed her writhing figure against his chest, and kissed her red lips, her furious eyes, her flaming cheeks and white throat, until she lay panting and breathless, unable to repel the possessive arms that drew her closer and closer.

She squirmed and moaned with mingled emotions as he sank his head, eagerly as a thirsty man bending to drink, and pressed his burning lips to the tender hollow of her throat. One hand wandered lower, to her waist, locked her against him despite her struggles.

In a sort of daze she found herself on the dingy cot, with her skirt bunched about her hips. The gleam of her own white flesh, so generously exposed, brought her to her senses, out of the maze of surrender into which his strength was forcing her. Her agile mind worked swiftly. As she sank back, suddenly she shrieked convulsively.

"My back! Something's stabbed me! A knife in the mattress—"

"What the hell?" He snatched her up instantly and whirled her about, but she had her hands pressed over the small of her back, and was writhing and moaning in well-simulated pain.

"I'm sorry, kid—" he began tearing the mattress to pieces, trying to find what had hurt her, and as he turned his back, she snatched a heavy pitcher from the wash-stand and smashed it over his head.

Not even Wild Bill Clanton could stand up under a clout like that. He went down like a pole-axed ox—or bull, rather—and she darted through the door and down the hall. Behind her she heard a furious roar that lent wings to her small high heels. She sprang into the alley and ran up it, not stopping to arrange her garments.

As she emerged into the street, a backward glance showed her Clanton reeling out into the alley, streaming blood, a raging and formidable figure. But she was on a semi-respectable street, with people strolling past and Sikh policemen within call. He wouldn't dare come out of the alley after her. She walked sedately away, arranging her dress as she went. A few loungers had seen her run from the alley, but they merely smiled in quiet amusement and made no comment. It was no novelty in that quarter to see a girl run from a back alley with her breasts exposed and her skirt pulled awry.

But a few deft touches smoothed out her appearance, and a moment later, looking cool, unruffled and demure as though she had just stepped out of a beauty shop, she was headed for her apartment, where waited the garments she must don for her dangerous masquerade.

An hour later she entered the famous antique shop of Woon Yuen, which rose in the midst of a squalid native quarter like a cluster of jewels in a litter of garbage. Outside it was unpretentious, but inside, even in the main chamber with its display intended to catch the fancy of tourists and casual collectors, the shop was a colorful riot of rich artistry.

A treasure trove in jade, gold, and ivory was openly exhibited, apparently unguarded. But the inhabitants of the quarter were not fooled by appearances. Not one would dare to try to rob Woon Yuen. Arline fought down a chill of fear.

A cat-footed Chinese bowed before her, hands concealed in his wide silken sleeves. She eyed him with the languid indifference of an aristocrat, and said, with an accent any Briton would have sworn she was born with: "Tell Woon Yuen that Lady Elizabeth Willoughby wishes to see the ivory Bon." The slant eyes of the impassive Chinese widened just a trifle at the name. With an even lower bow, he took the fragment of jade with the Chinese characters, and kowtowed her into an ebony chair with dragon-claw feet, before he disappeared through the folds of a great dark velvet tapestry which curtained the back of the shop.

She sat there, glancing indifferently about her, according to her role. Lady Elizabeth would not be expected to show any interest in the trifles displayed for the general public. She believed she was being spied on through some peephole. Woon Yuen was a mysterious figure, suspected of strange activities, but so far untouchable, either by his many enemies or by the authorities. When he came, it was so silently that he was standing before her before she was aware of his entrance. She glanced at him, masking her curiosity with the bored air of an English noblewoman.

Woon Yuen was a big man, for a Chinese, squattily built, yet above medium height. His square, lemon-tinted face was adorned with a thin wisp of drooping mustachios, and his bull-like shoulders seemed ready to split the seams of the embroidered black silk robe he wore. He had come to Shanghai from the North, and there was more Mongol than Chinese in him, as emphasized by his massive forearms, impressive even beneath his wide sleeves. He bowed, politely but not obsequiously. He seemed impressed, but not awed by the presence of the noted collector in his shop.

"Lady Elizabeth Willoughby does my humble establishment much honor," said he, in perfect English, sweeping his eyes over her without any attempt to conceal his avid interest in her ripe curves. There was a natural arrogance about him, an assurance of power. He had dealt with wealthy white women before, and strange tales were whispered of his dealings with some of them. The air of mystery and power about him made him seem a romantic figure to some European women. "The Bon is in the inner chamber," he said. "There, too, are my real treasures. These," he gestured contemptuously about him, "are only a show for tourists'. If milady would honor me—"

She rose and moved across the room, with the assured bearing of a woman of quality, certain of deference at all time. He drew back a satin curtain on which gilt dragons writhed, and following her through, drew it together behind them. They went along a narrow corridor, where the walls were hung with black velvet and the floor was carpeted with thick Bokhara rugs in which her feet sank deep.

A soft golden glow emanated from bronze lanterns, suspended from the gilt- inlaid ceiling. She felt her pulse quicken. She was on her way to the famous, yet mysterious, inner chamber of Woon Yuen, inaccessible to all but wealthy and beautiful women, and in which, rumor whispered, Woon Yuen had struck strange bargains; He did not always sell his antiques for money, and there were feminine collectors who would barter their virtue for a coveted relic.

Woon Yuen opened a bronze door, worked in gold and ebon inlay, and Arline entered a broad chamber, over a silvery plate of glass set in the threshold. She saw Woon Yuen glance down as she walked over it, and knew he was getting an eyeful. That mirror placed where a woman must walk over it to enter the chamber was a typical Chinese trick to allow the master of the establishment to get a more intimate glimpse of the charms of his fair customers, as reflected in the mirror. She didn't care, but was merely amused at his ingenuity. Even Woon Yuen would hardly dare to make a pass at Lady Elizabeth Willoughby.

He closed the door and bowed her to an ornate mahogany chair.

"Please excuse me for a moment, milady. I will return instantly."

He went out by another door, and she looked about her at a display whose richness might have shamed a shah's treasure-house. Here indeed were the real treasures of Woon Yuen—what looked like the plunder of a thousand sultans' palaces and heathen temples. Idols in jade, gold, and ivory grinned at her, and a less sophisticated woman would have blushed at some of the figures, depicting Oriental gods and goddesses in amorous poses of an astonishing variety. She could imagine the effect these things would have on some of his feminine visitors.

Even her eyes dilated a trifle at the sight of the smirking, pot-bellied monstrosity that was the ivory Bon, looted from God only knew what nameless monastery high in the forbidden Himalayas. Then every nerve tingled as she saw a gold-worked dragon head jutting from the wall beyond the figure. Quickly she turned her gaze back to the god, just as her host returned on silent, velvet-shod feet.

He smiled to see her staring at the idol and the female figure in its arms.

"That is only one of the conceptions of the god—the Tibetan. It is worth, to any collector—but let us delay business talk until after tea. If you will honor me—"

With his guest seated at a small ebon table, the Mongol struck a bronze gong, and tea was served by a slim, silent-footed Chinese girl, clad only in a filmy jacket which came a little below her budding hips, and which concealed none of her smooth-skinned, lemon-tinted charms.

This display, Arline knew, was in accord with the peculiar Chinese belief that a woman is put in a properly receptive mood for amorous advances by the sight of another woman's exposed charms. She wondered, if, after all, Woon Yuen had designs—but he showed no signs of it.

The slave girl bowed herself humbly out with a last salaam that displayed her full breasts beneath the low-necked jacket, and Arline's nerves tightened. Now was the time. She interrupted Woon Yuen's polite trivialities.

"That little jade figure, over there on the ivory shelf," she said, pointing. "Isn't that a piece of Jum Shan's work?"

"I will get it!"

As he rose and stepped to the shelf, she dropped the knock-out pellet into his tea-cup. It dissolved instantly, without discoloring the liquid. She was idly sipping her own tea when the Mongol returned and placed the tiny figure of a jade warrior before her.

"Genuine Jum Shan," said he. "It dates from the tenth century!" He lifted his cup and emptied it at a draught, while she watched him with a tenseness which she could not wholly conceal. He sat the cup down empty, frowning slightly and twitching his lips at the taste.

"I would like to call your attention, milady—" he leaned forward, reaching toward the jade figure—then slumped down across the table, out cold. In an instant she was across the room, and her white, tapering fingers were at work on the teeth of the carved dragon's head. There was an instinct in those fingers, a super-sensitiveness such as skilled cracksmen sometimes have.

In a few moments the jaws gaped suddenly, revealing a velvet-lined nest in the midst of which, like an egg of some fabled bird of paradise, burned and smoldered a great, smooth, round jewel.

She caught her breath as awedly she cupped it in her hands. It was a ruby, of such deep crimson that it looked darkly purple, the hue of old wine, and the blood that flows near the heart. It looked like the materialization of a purple nightmare. She could believe now the wild tales she had heard—that Woon Yuen worshiped it as a god, sucking madness from its sinister depths, that he performed terrible sacrifices to it—

"Lovely, is it not?"

The low voice cracked the tense stillness like the heart-stopping blast of an explosion. She whirled, gasping, then stood transfixed. Woon Yuen stood before her, smiling dangerously, his eyes slits of black fire. A frantic glance sped to the tea-table. There still sprawled a limp, bulky figure, idential to Woon Yuen in every detail.

"What—?" she gasped weakly.

"My shadow," he smiled. "I must be cautious. Long ago I hit upon the expedient of having a servant made up to resemble me, to fool my enemies. When I left the chamber a little while ago, he took my place, and I watched through the peep-hole. I supposed you were after the Heart.

"How did you guess?" She sensed the uselessness of denial.

"Why not? Has not every thief in China tried to steal it?" He spoke softly, but his eyes shone reddishly, and the veins swelled on his neck. "As soon as I learned you were not what you pretended, I knew you had come to steal something. Why not the ruby? I set my trap and let you walk into it. But I must congratulate you on your cleverness. Not one in a thousand could have discovered the way to open the dragon's jaws."

"How did you know I wasn't Lady Elizabeth?" she whispered, dry-lipped; the great ruby seemed to burn her palms.

"I knew it when you walked across the mirror and I saw your lower extremities reflected there, I have never seen Lady Elizabeth, but all dealers in jade know her peculiarities by reputation. One of them is such a passion for jade that she always wears jade-green step-ins. Yours are lavender."

"What are you going to do?" she panted, as he moved toward her.

A light akin to madness burned in his eyes.

"You have defamed the Heart by your touch! It must drink of all who touch it save me, its high priest! If a man, his blood! If a woman—"

No need for him to complete his abominable decree. The ruby fell to the thick carpet, rolled along it like a revolving, demoniac eyeball. She sprang back, shrieking, as Woon Yuen, no longer placid, but with his convulsed face a beast's mask, caught her by the wrist. Against his thickly muscled arms her struggles were vain. As in a nightmare, she felt herself lifted and carried kicking and scratching, through heavily brocaded drapes into a curtained alcove. Her eyes swept the room helplessly; she saw the ivory Bon leering at her as through a mist. It seemed to mock her.

The alcove was walled with mirrors. Only Chinese cruelty could have devised such an arrangement, where, whichever way she twisted her head she was confronted by the spectacle of her own humiliation, reflected from every angle. She was at once actor and spectator in a beastly drama. She could not escape the shameful sight of her own writhings and the eager brutish hands of Woon Yuen remorselessly subduing her hopeless, desperate struggles.

As she felt the greedy yellow fingers on her cringing flesh, she saw in the mirrors, her quivering white breasts, her dress torn—dishevelled, the scarlet skirt in startling contrast to the white thighs, with only a wisp of silk protecting them as they frantically flexed, twisted and writhed—then with a sucking gasp of breath between his grinding teeth, Woon Yuen tore the filmy underthings to rags on her body...

At the tea-table the senseless Chinese still sprawled, deaf to the frantic, agonized shrieks that rang again and again through the inner chamber of Woon Yuen.

An hour later a door opened into a narrow alley in the rear of Woon Yuen's antique shop, and Arline was thrust roughly out, her breasts almost bare, her dress ripped to shreds. She fell sprawling from the force of the shove, and the door was slammed, with a brutal laugh. Dazedly she rose, shook down the remains of her skirt, drew her dress together, and tottered down the alley, sobbing hysterically.

Inside the room from which she had just been ejected, Woon Yuen turned to a lean, saturnine individual, whose pigtail was wound tightly about his head, and from whose wide silk girdle jutted the handle of a light hatchet.

"Yao Chin, take Yun Kang and follow her. There is always some man behind the scenes, when a woman steals. I let her go because I wished her to lead us to that man, send Yun Kang back to me. On no account kill him yourself. I, and only I, must feed the Heart with their vile blood—hers and his."

The hatchetman bowed and left the room, his face showing nothing of his secret belief that Woon Yuen was crazy, not because he believed the Heart drank human blood, but because he, a rich merchant, insisted on doing murder which others of his class always left to hired slayers.

In the mouth of a little twisting alley that ran out upon a rotting abandoned wharf, Arline paused. Her face was haggard and desperate. She had reached the end of her trail. She had failed, and Tremayne would not accept any excuse. Ahead of her she saw only the black muzzles of a firing squad to which he would deliver her—but first there would be torture, inhuman torture, to wring from her secrets her captors would think she possessed. The world at large never knows the full story of the treatment of suspected spies.

With a low moan she covered her eyes with her arm and stumbled blindly toward the edge of the wharf—then a strong arm caught her waist and she looked up into the startled face of Wild Bill Clanton.

"What the hell are you fixin' to do?"

"Let go!" she whimpered. "It's my life! I can end it if I want to!"

"Not with me around," he grunted, picking her up and carrying her back away from the wharf-lip. He sat down on a pile and took her on his lap, like a child. "Good thing I found you," he grunted. "I had a hell of a time tracin' you after you slugged me and ran up that alley, but I finally saw you duckin' down this one. You pick the damndest places to stroll in. Now you tell me what the trouble is. A classy dame like you don't need to go jumpin' off of docks."

He seemed to hold no grudge for that clout with the pitcher. There was possessiveness in the clasp of his arms about her supple body, but she found a comforting solidity in the breast muscles against which her flaxen head rested. There was a promise of security in his masculine strength. Suddenly she no longer resented his persistent pursuit of her. She needed his strength—needed a man who would fight for her.

In a few words she told him everything—the hold Tremayne had on her, the task he had set for her, and what had happened in Woon Yuen's inner room.

He swore at the narrative.

"Ill get that yellow-belly for that! But first we'll go to the Alley of Rats. Try to stall Tremayne along to give you another chance. In the meantime I'll work on a Eurasian wench I know who could tell me plenty about him—and she will, too, or I'll skin her alive. He's been mixed up in plenty of crooked rackets. If we get somethin' hot on him, we can shut his mouth, all right. And we'll get somethin', you can bet."

When they entered the Alley of Rats, in a half-abandoned warehouse district in the native quarter, they did not see two furtive figures slinking after them, nor hear the taller whisper: "Yun Kang, go back and tell our master she had led us to a man! I will watch the alley till he comes."

Clanton and Arline turned into a dingy doorway, and went down a corridor that seemed wholly deserted. Groping along it, in the dusk, she found the room she sought and led Clanton into it. She lit a candle stub stuck on a shelf, and turned to Clanton: "He'll be here soon."

"I'll wait in the next room," he said, reluctantly taking his arm from about her waist. "If he gets rough, I'll come in."

Alone in the candle-lighted room she tried to compose herself; her heart was beating a wild tattoo, loud in the stillness. Somewhere rats scampered noisily. Time dragged insufferably. Then quick, light steps sounded in the hall, and Duke Tremayne burst through the door, his eyes blazing with greed. They turned red as he read defeat in her eyes; his face contorted.

"Damn you!" His fingers were like talons as he gripped her shoulders. "You failed!"

"I couldn't help it!" she pleaded. "He knew I was a fake. Please don't hurt me, Duke. I'll try again—"

"Try again? You little fool! Do you think that Chinese devil will give you another chance?" Tremayne's suavity was gone; he was like a madman. "You failed, after all my planning! All right! I'll have a little profit out of you! Take off that dress—" Already in shreds, the garment ripped easily in his grasp, baring a white breast which quivered under his gaze.

The inner door swung open. Tremayne wheeled, drawing a pistol, but before he could fire, Clanton's fist crashed against his jaw and stretched him senseless. Clanton bent and picked up the gun, then whirled as the hall door opened behind him. He stiffened as a tranquil voice spoke: "Do not move, my friend!"

He looked into the muzzle of a gun in Woon Yuen's hand.

"So you are the man?" muttered the Mongol. "Good! The Heart drinks—"

He could fire before Clanton could lift the pistol he held. But behind the American Arline laughed suddenly, unexpectedly.

"It worked, Bill!" she exclaimed. "Our man will get the ruby while we hold Woon Yuen here! The fool! He hasn't yet guessed that we tricked him to draw him away from his shop after I'd found where he hid the gem."

Woon Yuen's face went ashen. With a choking cry he fired, not at Clanton but at the girl. But his hand was shaking like a leaf. He missed, and like an echo of his shot came the crack of Clanton's pistol. Woon Yuen dropped, drilled through the head.

"Good work, kid!" Clanton cried exultantly. "He fell for it—hard!"

"But they'll hang us for this!" whimpered the girl. "Listen! Someone's running up the hall! They've heard the shots!"

Stooping swiftly Clanton folded Duke Tremayne's fingers about the butt of the smoking pistol, and then kicked the man heavily in the shins. Tremayne grunted and showed signs of returning consciousness. Clanton drew Arline into the other room and they watched through the crack of the door.

The hall door opened and Yao Chin came in like a panther, hatchet in hand. His eyes blazed at the sight of Woon Yuen on the floor, Tremayne staggering to his feet, a pistol in his hand. With one stride the hatchetman reached the reeling blackmailer. There was a flash of steel, an ugly butcher-shop crunch, and Tremayne slumped, his skull split. Yao Chin tossed the reeking hatchet to the floor beside his victim and turned away.

"Out of here, quick!" muttered Clanton, shaking Arline who seemed threatened with hysteria. "Up the alley—in the other direction."

She regained her poise in their groping flight up the darkened alley, as Clanton muttered: "We're in the clear now. Tremayne can't talk, with his head split, and that hatchetman'll tell his pals Tremayne shot their boss."

"We'd better get out of town!" They had emerged into a narrow, lamp-lit street.

"Why? We're safe from suspicion now." A little tingle of pleasure ran through her as Clanton turned into a doorway and spoke to a grinning old Chinaman who bowed them into a small neat room, with curtained windows and a couch.

As the door closed behind the old Chinese, Clanton caught her hungrily to him, finding her red lips, now unresisting. Her arms went about his thick neck as he lifted her bodily from the floor. Willingly she yielded, responded to his eager caresses.

She had only exchanged masters, it was true, but this was different. There was a delicious sense of comfort and security in a strong man who could fight for her and protect her. There was pleasure in the dominance of his strong hands. With a blissful sigh she settled herself luxuriously in his powerful arms.

THE END

She Devil

Table of Contents

OUTSIDE, where dawn was just dispelling the fog-wisps from the South Pacific waters, the sea was calm, but a typhoon was raging in the cabin of the Saucy Wench. Most of the thunder was supplied by Captain Harrigan—­vociferous oratory, charged with brimstone and sulphur, punctuated with resounding bangs of a hairy fist on the table across which he was bellowing damnation and destruction at Raquel O’Shane, who screamed back at him. Between them they were making so much noise they did not hear the sudden shouting that burst forth on deck.

“Shut up!” bawled the captain. He was broad as a door and his undershirt revealed a chest and arms muscled and hairy as an ape’s. A growth of whiskers bristled his jaws, and his eyes blazed. He was a spectacle to daunt any woman, even if she had not known him as Bully Harrigan, smuggler, blackbirder, pearl-thief and pirate, when opportunity offered itself.

“Shut up!” he repeated. “One more yap out of you, you Spanish-Irish gutter-snipe, and I’ll bend one on your jaw!”

Being a man of primal impulses, he demonstrated his meaning by a fervent swipe of a mallet-like fist, which Raquel dodged with the agility of much practice. She was slim and supple, with foamy black hair, dark eyes that blazed with deviltry, and an ivory-tinted skin, heritage of her mixed Celtic-Latin blood, that made men’s heads swim at first sight. Her figure agitated by her movements, was a poem of breath-taking grace.

“Pig!” she screamed. “Don’t you dare lay a finger on me!” This was purely rhetorical; Harrigan had laid a finger on her more than once during the past weeks, to say nothing of whole fists, belaying pins, and rope’s ends. But she was still untamed.

She too banged the table and cursed in three languages.

“You’ve treated me like a dog all the way from Brisbane!” she raged. “Getting tired of me, are you, after taking me away from a good job in San Francisco—­”

“I took you—­” The enormity of the accusation choked the captain. “Why, you Barbary Coast hussy, the first time I ever saw you was that night you climbed aboard as we were pullin’ out and begged me on your blasted knees to take you to sea and save you from the cops, account of your knifin’ a Wop in that Water Street honky-tonk where you were workin’, you—­”

“Don’t you call me that!” she shrieked, doing a war-dance. “All I did in that joint was dance! And I’ve played square with you, and now—­”

“Now I’m sick of your tantrums,” quoth Harrigan, downing a horse-sized snort from a square-faced bottle. “They’re too much even for a good-hearted swab like me. As soon as we raise a civilized port, I’m goin’ to kick you off onto the docks. And you give me any more lip, and I’ll sell you to the first Kanaka chief I meet, you blasted hell-cat!”

That set her off again, like a match to the fuse of a sky-rocket. She hit the roof, and for a few moments the cabin was so full of impassioned feminine profanity it even drowned out Harrigan’s roars.

“And where are we heading?” she demanded, remembering another grievance. “I want to know! The crew wants to know! You’ve told us nothing since we left Brisbane! We’ve picked up no cargo, and now we’ve gotten into these God-forsaken seas where none of us knows where we are, except you, and all you do is guzzle booze and study the blasted chart!”

She snatched it from the table and brandished it accusingly.

“Gimme that!” he bellowed, grabbing wildly. She jumped back agilely, sensing it was precious to him, and woman-like seizing the advantage.

“I won’t! Not till you promise to quit knocking me around! Get back! I’ll throw it out the port-hole if you come any closer!” Her rapid breathing, her agitation, made her loveliness devastating, but for the moment, he had no eyes for that.

With a frantic roar Harrigan lunged, upsetting the table with a crash. Raquel had raised a bigger hurricane than she had expected or intended. She squealed in alarm and leaped back, the chart waving wildly in her hand.

“Gimme that!” It was the howl of a lost soul. Harrigan’s hair stood straight up and his eyes bulged. Raquel yelped with terror, too confused to make her peace by delivering the article requested. She sprang backward, tripped over a chair and fell on her back, with a shriek and an involuntary abandon that tossed her bare ivory-tinted legs revealingly skyward. But Harrigan was blind to this entrancing display. For as she fell, her arm, thrown out wildly, propelled the chart through the air; and as the Devil always controls such things, it sailed through the open port-hole.

Harrigan tore his hair and rushed for the port-hole. On deck an ear-splitting racket had burst suddenly forth but the occupants of the cabin ignored it. Harrigan, glaring pop-eyed from the port-hole, was just in time to see the chart vanish on its way to Davy Jones’s locker, and his agonized howl paled all his previous efforts—­so much so that out in the passageway the bos’n, who had just reached the cabin door in breathless haste, turned tail, and fled back the way he had come. Raquel had risen, in apprehensive silence, and was making some necessary adjustments in her garments. Her lovely eyes dilated at the red glare in Harrigan’s eyes as he wheeled toward her.

“You threw that away on purpose!” he choked. “A million dollars right through the damn port-hole! I’ll fix you—­”

He lunged and she skipped back with a squeal, but not quickly enough. His huge paw closed on a shoulder-strap. There was a shriek, a ripping sound, and Raquel fled toward the door minus the dress which remained in Harrigan’s hand. He was after her instantly, but panic winged her small feet. She beat him to the door and slammed it in his face, and even tried to hold it against him until convinced of her folly by a big fist which, crashing through the panels, grazed her dainty nose, filling her eyes with stars and tears. She yipped pitifully, abandoned the door, and fled up the companion-way, a startling figure in slippers and pink chemise.

After her came Captain Harrigan, a bellowing, red-eyed, hairy monstrosity whose only passion was to sweep the deck from poop to forecastle with that supple, half-naked body.

In their different emotions of fright and fury they were not, even then, aware of the clamor going on upon the deck, until they came full on a scene so unique it even checked Harrigan short in his tracks.

Not so Raquel; she scampered across the deck, unnoticed by the mob milling in the waist, and sprang into the main shrouds before she turned and stared at the spectacle which had halted Harrigan.

Hemmed in by a ring of blaspheming seamen the mate, Buck Richardson, was locked in combat with a stranger whose breeches (his only garment) dripped sea-water. That Mr. Richardson should be battling a stranger was not unique; what was unique was that Mr. Richardson, the terror of a thousand ports, bucko deluxe and hazer extraordinary, was getting the prime essence of hell beaten out of him. His opponent was as big as he—­a broad-shouldered, clean-waisted, heavy-armed man with wetly plastered black hair, blue eyes that blazed with the joy of mayhem, and lips that grinned savagely even when, as now, they were smeared with blood.

He fought with gusto that horrified even his hard-boiled audience. Continually he plunged in, head down, not blindly like a bull, but with his eyes open—­except the one the mate had closed—­hammering the luckless bucko like a blacksmith pounding an anvil. Richardson was bleeding like a stuck pig, and spitting pieces of broken teeth. He was blowing like a porpoise and in his one good eye there was a desperate gleam.

“Who’s that?” demanded Harrigan aghast. “Where’d he come from?”

“We sighted him just as the fog lifted,” said the bos’n, spitting carefully to leeward. “He was driftin’ along in a open boat, balin’ and cussin’ somethin’ fierce. His boat sunk under him before he could get it to the ship, and he swum for it. A shark tried to scoff him on the way, but he kicked its brains out or bit it in the neck, or done somethin’ atrocious to it. That’s Wild Bill Clanton!”

“The hell it is!” grunted the captain, staring with new interest. Then he swore as Clanton bashed Mr. Richardson on the snout with appalling results. “They’re bleedin’ all over my clean deck!”

“Well,” said the bos’n, “as soon as he clumb over the rail he seen the mate and went for him. From the remarks they passed before they was too winded to cuss, I gathered that Buck stole a gal from Clanton once. I went after you, but you seemed busy, so I just let ’em fight.”

Bam! Mr. Clanton’s left mauler met Mr. Richardson’s midriff with an impact that sounded like the smack of a loose boom against a wet sail. Bam! A mallet-like right-hander to the jaw and Mr. Richardson went reeling backward and brought up against the rail with a crack that would have fractured the skull of anybody except a bucko mate on a trading schooner.

Clanton went for him with a blood-thirsty yell—­then his eyes encountered Raquel, poised in the ratlines. He stopped short, batted his eyes, his mouth wide open as he glared wildly at the ivory-tinted vision posed against the blue, in a sheer wisp of pink silk that tempted even as it concealed little.

“Holy saints of Hell!” breathed Clanton in awe—­and at this instant Mr. Richardson, a bloody ruin, lurched away from the rail with a belaying pin. Bam! It crashed on Clanton’s head and that warrior bit the deck. Mr. Richardson croaked gratefully and bestowed himself lovingly on his victim’s bosom, naively intent on beating his brains out with his trusty belaying pin. But Clanton anticipated his design by drawing up his legs, after the manner of a panther fighting on its back, and, receiving the hurtling mate on his feet and knees, he catapulted Mr. Richardson over his head.

The mate smote the deck headfirst and reverberantly, and this time the impact was too much even for his adamantine skull. But Clanton, bounding up, observed some faint signs of life still, and sought to correct this oversight by leaping ardently and with both feet on the mate’s bosom.

“Grab him!” yelled Harrigan. “He’s killin’ the mate!”

As no spectacle could have pleased the crew better than Mr. Richardson’s violent demise, they made no move to obey. Harrigan ran forward blasphemously and tugging forth an enormous revolver thrust it under the nose of Mr. Clanton who eyed it and its owner without favor.

“Are you the cap’n of this mud-scow?” Clanton demanded.

“I am, by God!” gnashed Mr. Harrigan. “I’m Bully Harrigan! What are you doin’ on board my ship?”

“I’ve been keepin’ a damned sieve of a boat afloat for a day and a night,” retorted the other. “I was mate aboard the Damnation, out of Bristol. The cap’n didn’t like Americans. After I won his share of the cargo at draw poker, he welshed and put me afloat—­with the aid of the crew.”

Harrigan broodingly visualized the battle that must have required!

“Carry the mate to his bunk and bring him to,” he ordered the men. “And for you, Clanton, you’ll work for your passage! Get for’ard!”

Clanton ignored the command. He was again staring at the vision clinging to the ratlines. Raquel peeped at him approvingly, noting the clean-cut muscular symmetry that was his.

“Who’s that?” he inquired, and all turned to stare. Harrigan roared like a sea-lion with awakened memory.

“Drag her down!” he yelled. “Tie her to the mast! I’ll—­”

“Don’t touch me!” shrieked Raquel. “I’ll jump and drown myself!”

She didn’t mean that, but she sounded as though she did. Clanton reached the rail with a tigerish bound, caught her wrist, and whipped her down onto the deck before she knew what was happening.

“Oh!” she gasped, staring at him with dilated eyes. He was bronzed by the sun of the Seven Seas, and his torso was ridged with clean hard cords of muscles. In fierce admiration his gaze devoured her from her trim ankles to the foamy burnished mass of her hair.

“Good work, Clanton!” roared Harrigan, striding forward. “Hold her!” Raquel wailed despairfully, but Harrigan, reaching for her, had his hand knocked aside, and he paused and goggled stupidly at Clanton.

“Avast!” roared Clanton gustily. “That’s no way to treat a lady!”

“Lady, hell!” bleated Harrigan. “Do you know what she just did? Threw away my chart! The only dash-blank chart in the world that could show me how to find the island of Aragoa!”

“Was we goin’ there, cap’n?” asked the bos’n.

“Yes, we was!” yelled Harrigan. “And what for? I’ll tell you! Ambegis. A barrel full! At thirty-two dollars an ounce! You bilge-rats been grousin’ to know where we were sailin’ to—­all right, I’ll tell you! And then I’m goin’ to tie that wench up and skin her stern with a rope’s end!

“A few months ago a blackbirder bound for Australia went on a reef in a storm, off a desert island, and nobody but the mate got ashore alive. They’d found a mess of the stuff floatin’ on the water, and filled a big barrel with it—­and it floated ashore with him. The mate stood the solitude of the island as long as he could, and then took to sea in the ship’s boat he’d patched up. He’d salvaged a chart and marked the island’s position. He’d been weeks at sea when I picked him up, on my last voyage from Honolulu to Brisbane. He was ravin’ and let slip about the ambergris—­I mean he was that grateful to me for savin’ him he told me all about it, and gimme the chart for safekeepin’, and right after that he got delirious and fell overboard and drowned—­”

Somebody laughed sardonically and Harrigan glared murderously around.

“He called the island Aragoa,” he growled. “It ain’t on no other chart. And now that the daughter of Jezebel has fed that chart to the sharks—­”

“Why, hell!” quoth Clanton. “Is that all? Why, I can steer you to Aragoa without any blasted chart! I’ve been there a dozen times!”

Harrigan started and looked at him searchingly.

“Are you lyin’?”

“Belay with those insults!” said Clanton heatedly. “I won’t take you anywhere unless you promise not to punish the girl.”

“All right,” snarled Harrigan, and Raquel sighed in relief. “But!” brandishing his gun in Clanton’s face, “if you’re lyin’, I’ll feed you to the sharks! Take the wheel and lay a course for Aragoa. You don’t leave the poop till we raise land!”

“I’ve got to have food,” growled Clanton.

“Tell it to the cook. Then get hold of that wheel.” Reminded suddenly of Raquel’s lightly-clad condition he roared: “Get below and get some clothes on, you shameless slut!”

A heavy toe emphasized the command by a direct hit astern, and she fled squeaking for the companion.

Clanton scowled, descended into the galley, and bullied the Chinese cook into setting out a feed that would have taxed the capacity of a horse. Having disposed of this, he swaggered up the poop ladder and took the wheel. The men watched him with interest, which was shared by Raquel, peeping from the companion. She had heard of him: who in the South Seas had not? A wild adventurer roaring on a turbulent career that included everything from pearl-diving to piracy, he was a man at least, not a beast like Harrigan.

Her flesh tingled deliciously with the feel of his strong grasp on her rounded arm; she was consumed with eagerness for more intimate contact with him, but the opportunity did not come until night had fallen and the powerful figure stood in solitary grandeur at the wheel.

His shoulders bulked against the South Sea stars as he held the schooner to her course; he might have posed for the image of intrepid exploration until a slender figure glided up the poop ladder.

“Does Harrigan know you’re out here?” he demanded.

“He sleeps like a pig,” she answered, her great dark eyes sad and wistful in the starlight. “He is a pig.” She whimpered a little and leaned against him as if seeking pity and protection.

“Poor kid,” he said with grand compassion, slipping a protecting arm about her waist—­the paternal effect of which was somewhat marred by his patting of the swelling slope of a firm hip. A luxurious shudder ran through her supple body and she snuggled closer within the bend of his muscular arm and pressed her cheek against his shoulder.

“What did Harrigan say was the name of that island?” he asked.

“Aragoa!” she jerked her head back and stared at him, startled. “I thought you said you knew about it!”

“Never heard of it!” he declared. “I just said that to save you!”

“Oh!” she stood aghast. “What will we do when he finds out you lied?”

“I dunno,” he answered. “We’re in a jam that requires thought and concentration. Sneak down and steal me a few bottles of Harrigan’s booze.”

She cast him an uncertain glance, but moved away down the ladder, softly as an ivory-hued shadow, to return presently with an arm-ful of darkly gleaming bottles that made Clanton’s eyes glisten. He lashed the wheel, casually sighting at a star on the horizon, and sat down by the rail.

“Set ’em down here,” he requested, and when she complied, he grabbed her before she could straighten and pulled her down on his lap. For convention’s sake she struggled faintly for a moment, and then her arms went convulsively around his corded neck, and she gave him her full red lips in a kiss that he felt clear to the tips of his toes.

“Judas!” During the entire course of a roving life he had never encountered a human volcano like this before. He shook his head to clear the swimming brain, took a deep breath and dived. When he came up for air, she was gasping too, quivering from the dynamic impact of his kisses.

Contentedly he knocked the neck off the bottle, took a deep swig and held it to her lips. She merely sipped; the night was still young, and she needed no alcoholic stimulant to drive the hot blood racing through her veins. It was already breaking all speed records.

Clanton did not need any stimulants either; but drank because he was thirsty; because liquor was to him what moonlight and perfume are to some men. At each swig he gulped as though he were trying to see the bottom.

By the time he had tossed an empty overboard he was saying: “To hell with Harrigan! If he gets gay with me, I’ll kick his teeth out! I don’t believe there’s any such damn’ place as Aragoa, anyway!”

“Who cares?” she breathed, leaning her supple back against his breast, and lifting her arms up and back to encircle his brawny neck. He ran an appreciative hand over a warm, rounded shoulder, and let his other hand rest on a knee.

Just as grey dawn stole over the sea, a terrific shock ran through the Saucy Wench. There was a crash in the galley, blasphemy in the forecastle, as men fell out of their bunks. The schooner lurched drunkenly—­and remained motionless, with a list to starboard. Preceded by a blue-streaked haze of profanity Harrigan came hurtling from the companion and pranced up the poop ladder in his drawers.

“What the blitherin’ hell?” he screamed. “My God, we’re aground!”

From a litter of empty bottles Clanton rose unsteadily, stretched, yawned, spat and stared appreciatively at the jungle-fringed beach which—­with only a narrow strip of shallow water between—­stretched away from under the port bow.

“There’s your island, Bully!” he announced with a magnificent gesture.

Harrigan tore his hair and howled like a wolf. “Did you have to run her onto the beach, you son of a slut?”

“That could have happened to anybody,” asserted Clanton, and added reprovingly: “Where’s your pants?”

But the captain had seen the broken bottles, and his howl had all the poignancy of a stricken soul. Then he saw something else. Raquel, awakened by the noise, rose uncertainly, rubbing her eyes childishly. She made a face, tasting again all the square-face she had guzzled the night before.

Harrigan turned purple; his arm windmilled, to the fascination of the crew who watched from the deck below. He found words, lurid and frenetic.

“You stole my liquor!” he roared. “You had my girl here all night! You’ve run my ship aground, and by God, I’m goin’ to kill you, ambergris or no ambergris!”

He reached for his gun, only to discover that he wore neither gun nor belt. Bellowing he snatched a belaying pin from the rail and made at Clanton who smote him with such effect that the captain’s head fractured the binnacle as his whole body performed a parabola backward.

At this moment a frightful figure appeared at the head of the starboard ladder—­Mr. Richardson, bedecked in bandages, and with one good eye gleaming eerily. Not even such a beating as he’d received yesterday could long keep a true bucko in his bunk. In his hand was a revolver, and this he fired point-blank. But Mr. Richardson’s one good eye was bleared, and his aim was not good. His bullet merely burned a welt across Clanton’s ribs, and before he could fire again, Clanton’s foot, striking his breastbone with great violence, catapulted him headlong down the ladder at the foot of which his head again met the deck with a force that rendered him temporarily hors-de-combat.

But Captain Harrigan had seized the opportunity to flee down the port ladder yelling: “Gimme my gun! I’ll shoot ’em both!”

“Overboard!” yelled Clanton to Raquel, and then as she hesitated, he grabbed her around the waist, tossed her over the rail, and leaped after her.

The plunge into the water snapped her out of her hangover; she screamed, gasped, and then struck out for the beach, followed by Clanton. They reached it just as Harrigan appeared on the poop with a triumphant howl and a Winchester, with which he opened up on them as they raced across the sands and dived into the trees.

Under cover Clanton paused and looked back. The antics of Harrigan on the poop moved him to hearty guffaws, smiting his dripping thigh. Raquel glared at him, wringing out her skirt, and raking back a wet strand of hair.

“What’s so funny about being marooned?” she demanded angrily.

He spanked her jocosely and replied: “Don’t worry, kid. When the schooner sails, we’ll be on her. You stay here and watch ’em while I go inland and look for fruit and fresh water. She’s not stuck bad; they can warp her off.”

“All right.” She shucked her wet dress and hung it up to dry, while she lay down on her stomach on the soft dry sand to peer through the bushes at the ship. She made an alluring picture thus, her pink chemise dripping from their submersion, fitting her tighter than a glove. Clanton admired the view for a moment, and then departed through the trees, striding lightly and softly for so big a man.

Raquel lay there, watching the men piling into boats, with hawsers, where presently they were employed in yanking the schooner loose, stern-first, by main strength and profanity. But it was slow work. The sun rose, and Raquel got impatient. She was hungry and very, very thirsty.

She donned her dress, now dry, and started out to look for Clanton. The trees were denser than she had thought, and she soon lost sight of the beach. Presently she had to climb over a big log, and when she leaped down on the other side, a bramble bush caught up her skirt, twisting it high about her ivory thighs. She twisted about in vain, unable to reach the clinging branch or to free her skirt.

As she squirmed and swore, a light step sounded behind her, and without looking around she commanded, “Bill, untangle me!”

Obligingly a firm masculine hand grasped her skirt and freed it from the branch, by the simple process of raising it several inches. But her rescuer did not then lower the garment; indeed Raquel felt him pull it up even higher—­much higher!

“Quit clowning,” she requested, turning her head—­and then she opened her lovely mouth to its widest extent and emitted a yell that startled the birds in the trees. The man who was holding her skirt in such an indelicate position was not Clanton. He was a big Kanaka in breech-clout. Raquel made a convulsive effort to escape, but a big brown arm encircled her supple waist. In an instant the peaceful glade was a hurricane-center, punctuated by lusty shrieks that a big hand clapped over red-lipped mouth could not altogether stifle.

Clanton heard those screams as he glided like a big bronzed tiger toward the beach. They acted on him like a jolt of electricity. The next instant he was in full career through the jungle, leaving behind him a sizzling wake of profanity. Crashing through the bushes, he burst full onto a scene, striking in its primitive simplicity.

Raquel was defending her virtue as vigorously as civilized nations defend mythical possessions. Her dress had been torn half off and her white body and limbs contrasted vividly with the brown skin of her captor. He wasn’t all brown, though; he was red in spots, for she had bitten him freely. So much so that irritation entered into his ardor, and, momentarily abandoning his efforts to subdue her by more pleasant means, he drew back an enormous fist for a clout calculated to waft her into dreamland.

It was at this moment that Clanton arrived on the scene and his bare foot, describing a terrific arc, caught the Kanaka under his haunches and somersaulted him clear over his captive, who scurried to her protector on her all-fours.

“Didn’t I tell you to stay on the beach?” Wham! In his irritation Clanton emphasized his reproof with a resounding, open-handed slap where he could reach her easiest. Raquel’s shriek was drowned in a vengeful roar. The Kanaka had regained his feet and was bounding toward them, swinging a knotty-headed war club he had leaned against a tree when he stole up on Raquel.

He lunged with a yell and a swing that would have spattered Clanton’s brains all over the glade if it had landed. But it flailed empty air as Clanton left his feet in a headlong dive that carried him under the swipe and crashed his shoulders against the Kanaka’s legs. Bam! They hit the earth together and the club flew out of the native’s hand.

The next instant they were rolling all over the glade in a desperate dog-fight, gouging and slugging. Then Clanton, in the midst of their frantic revolutions, perceived that Raquel had secured the club and was dancing about, trying to get a swipe at his antagonist. Clanton, knowing the average accuracy of a woman’s aim, was horrified. The Kanaka had him by the throat, trying to drive thumbs and fingers through the thick cords of muscle that protected the white man’s wind-pipe and jugular, but it was the risk of being accidentally brained by a wild swipe of Raquel’s club that galvanized Clanton to more desperate energy.

Fighting for an instant’s purchase, he drove his knee into the Kanaka’s groin, and the man gasped and doubled convulsively. Clanton broke away, kicking him heavily in the belly. Surprisingly the warrior gave a maddened yell, grabbed the foot and twisted it savagely. Clanton whirled to save himself a broken leg, and fell to his all-fours. At the same moment Raquel swung the too-heavy club. She missed as the Kanaka ducked, and she sprawled on her belly in the sand. Both men gained their feet simultaneously, but the Kanaka reached for the club. As he bent over Clanton swung his right over-hand like a hammer and with about the same effect. It crashed behind the Kanaka’s ear with the impact of a caulking maul. The Kanaka stretched out in the sand without a quiver.

Raquel leaped up and threw herself hysterically in Clanton’s arms. He shook her loose, with lurid language.

“No time for a pettin’ party! There’s a whole village of the illegitimates over toward the other side of the island. I saw it! Come on!” He grabbed her wrist and fled toward the beach with her, panting: “Thick brush, men cussin’ on the ship. They wouldn’t hear the racket we’ve made—­I hope.” She didn’t ask why. She clutched her tattered dress about her as she ran.

They burst onto the beach, and saw that the Saucy Wench was afloat; she was anchored in clear water off the shore, and Harrigan was oiling his rifle on the poop, with the be-bandaged Richardson beside him.

“Ahoy!” yelled Clanton from behind a tree. “Harrigan! I’ve found your ambergris!”

Harrigan started violently and glared, head-down like a surly bear.

“What’s that? Where are you? Show yourself!”

“And get shot? Like hell! But I’ll make a trade with you. I’ve hidden the stuff where you’ll never find it. But I’ll lead you to it if you’ll promise to take us aboard and put us ashore at some civilized port!”

“You fool!” whispered Raquel, kicking his shins. “He’ll promise anything, and then shoot us when he’s got the loot!”

But Harrigan was bellowing back across the strip of blue water.

“All right! Let bygones be bygones! I’m comin’ ashore!”

A few moments later a boat was making for the beach. Raquel danced in her nervousness; her torn dress revealed flashing expanses of ivory flesh.

“Are you crazy? They’ll kill us! And that native you knocked out will come to and get his tribe and—­”

He grinned and stepped out on the beach, pulling her with him.

“They won’t shoot us till I show them the ambergris! I’ll take Harrigan inland; you wait here at the boat. And let me do the talkin’!”

She was not in the habit of meekly taking orders, but she lapsed into sulky and bewildered silence. She was badly scared.

Harrigan and Richardson piled out before the boat grounded. The captain had a Winchester, the mate a shotgun. They covered Clanton instantly.

“Stay here!” the captain told the half dozen men who had rowed him ashore. “Now then, Clanton, lead us to that ambergris, and no tricks!”

“Follow me!” Clanton led them into the jungle while behind at the boat, Raquel watched with dilated eyes and crawling flesh.

Clanton swung wide of the glade where—­he hoped—­the Kanaka still lay senseless. Hardly out of sight of the beach he stumbled over a root and fell. Sitting up he groaned, cursed and tenderly felt of his ankle.

“Blast the luck! It’s broken! You’ll have to rig a stretcher and carry me!”

“Carry you, hell!!” snorted Harrigan. “Tell us where the loot is, and we’ll go on and find it ourselves.”

“Go straight on about three hundred yards.” groaned Clanton. “Till you come to a clump of sago-palms. Then turn to the left and go on till you come to a pool of fresh water. I rolled the barrel in there.”

“All right,” grunted Harrigan. “And if we don’t find it, we’ll shoot you when we get back.”

“And we’re goin’ to shoot you whether we find it or not!” snarled Richardson. “That’s why we left the men on the beach—­didn’t want no witnesses! And we’re goin’ to leave that wench to starve here with your skeleton when we sail. How you like that, huh?”

Clanton registered horrified despair, and both men chortled brutally as they strode away. They vanished among the trees, and Clanton waited a minute—­five—­ten—­then he sprang up and sprinted for the beach.

He burst onto the beach so suddenly the bos’n nearly shot him.

“Pile in and row for the ship, Quick!” he yelled. “Cannibals! They’ve got Harrigan and the mate! Listen!”

Back in the jungle rose a sudden bedlam of shots and blood-freezing yells. It was enough. No heroic soul proposed a rescuing sortie. In another instant the boat was scudding for the schooner. Its occupants swarmed up the side, spurred by the rising clamor that was approaching through the jungle. Clanton stood on the poop and yelled orders, and they were obeyed without question.

The anchor came up with a rush, and the Saucy Wench was standing out to sea by the time the tribesman danced out on the beach. They swarmed to the water’s edge, three or four hundred of them, yelling vengefully. One waved a blood-splashed shotgun, another a broken Winchester.

Clanton grinned; the directions he had given his enemies had led them accurately—­straight into the native village! He thumbed his nose at the baffled barbarians on the beach, and turned and addressed the crew.

“As the only man aboard who can navigate, and owner of the ship, I’m assuming the position of cap’n! Do I hear any objections?”

The bos’n demanded: “What you mean, owner of ship?”

“Me and Harrigan matched pennies,” asserted Clanton. “My share of the ambergris against the ship. I won.”

“What about the ambergris?” demanded a hardy soul.

Clanton nodded back toward the receding beach. “Anybody that wants to swim back there and fight those boys for it, is welcome to try!”

In the self-conscious silence that followed, he barked suddenly: “All right, get to work! Tail onto those lines! There’s a breeze makin’ and we’re headin’ for the Solomons for a load of niggers for Queensland!”

As the crew jumped briskly, Raquel nudged him.

“You didn’t find that ambergris,” she said, her eyes ablaze with admiration. “That wasn’t even the right island. That was all a lie!”

“I doubt if there ever was any ambergris,” quoth he. “The fellow that made that chart was probably crazy. To hell with it!” He patted her plump hip possessively and added: “I reckon you go with the ship; that bein’ the case I want to see you down in the cap’n’s cabin, right away!”

THE END

Poetry

Table of Contents

Adventure

Adventurer

The Alamo

Always Come Evening

Ambition

An American

An American Epic

Arcadian Days

Arkham

At The Bazaar

“Aw Come On And Fight!”

Babel

The Ballad of Abe Slickemmore

A Ballad of Insanity

The Ballad of Monk Kickawhore

The Bombing of Gon Fanfew

But The Hill Were Ancient Then

The Chinese Gong

The Choir Girl

Crete

Dead Man’s Hate

The Deed Beyond The Deed

Deeps

Dreamer

Dreaming

Dreaming on Downs

Dreams of Nineveh

Drummings on an Empty Skull

Easter Island

Empire’s Destiny

Eternity

Fables For Little Folk

“Feach Air Muir Lionadhi Gealach Buidhe Mar Or”

Flaming Marble

Forbidden Magic

The Gates of Ninevah

Girl

A Great Man Speaks

The Grey Lover

The Harp of Alfred

High Blue Halls

How to Select a Successful Evangelist

Illusion

Ivory in the Night

Jack Dempsey

John Kelley

John L. Sullivan

Kid Lavigne is Dead

The Kissing of Sal Snooboo

A Lady’s Chamber

Laughter

Lesbia

Libertine

Life

Lines to G. B. Shaw

Lust

The Madness of Cormac

The Maiden of Kercheezer

A Mick in Israel

Miser’s Gold

Monarchs

Moon Mockery

The Moor Ghost

The Mottoes of the Boy Scouts

The Mountains of California

My Children

Mystic

Nancy Hawk – A Legend of Virginity

Nun

Ocean-Thoughts

The One Black Stain

One Who Comes at Eventide

An Open Window

Orientia

Poet

Private Magrath of the A.E.F.

Prude

A Rattlesnake Sings In The Grass

Rebellion

Recompense

Red Thunder

Renunciation

Repenctance

The Ride of Falume

The Riders of Babylon

The Road To Hell

The Robes of the Righteous

A Roman Lady

Romance

Roundelay of The Roughneck

Rules of Etiquette

Sailor

The Sand of Time

San Jacinto

The Sea

Secrets

Serpent

Shadow of Dreams

Shadows

Sighs in the Yellow Leaves

The Singer in the Mist

The Skull in the Clouds

Skulls and Dust

Song at Midnight

A Song of Cheer

A Song of College

A Song of Greenwich

The Song of the Bats

The Song of the Sage

A Song Out of Midian

Sonora to Del Rio

Summer Morn

Surrender

Tarantella

The Tempter

That Women May Sing of Us

Thor

Tides

To a Roman Woman

To a Woman

To Certain Cultured Women

Toper

To the Contended

A Tribute to the Sportsmanship of the Fans

Visions

The Voices Waken Memory

The Weakling

Yodels of Good Sneer to the Pipple, Damn Them

Adventure

Table of Contents

I am the spur

That rides men's souls,

The glittering lure

That leads around the world.

Adventurer

Table of Contents

Dusk on the sea; the fading twilight shifts'

The night wind bears the ocean's whisper dim—

Wind, on your bosom many a phantom drifts—

A silver star climbs up the blue world rim.

Wind, make the green leaves dance above me here

And idly swing my silken hammock—so;

Now, on that glimmering molten silver mere

Send the long ripples wavering to and fro.

And let your moon-white tresses touch my face

And let me know your slim-armed, cool embrace

While to my dreamy soul you whisper low.

Dream—aye, I've dreamed since last night left her tower

And now again she comes on star-soled feet.

Welcome, old friend; here in this rose-gemmed bower

I've drowsed away your Sultan's golden heat.

Here in my hammock, Time I've dreamed away

For I have but to stretch a hand out, lo,

I'm treading langurous shores of Yesterday,

Moon-silvered deserts or the star-weird snow;

I float o'er seas where ships are purple shells,

I hear the tinkle of the camel bells

That waft down Cairo's streets when dawn winds blow.

South Seas! I watch when dusky twilight comes

Making vague gods of ancient, sea-set trees.

The world path beckons—loud the mystic drums—

Here at my hand the magic golden keys

That fit the doors of Romance, Wonder, strange

Dim gossamer adventures; seas and stars.

Why, I have roamed the far Moon Mountain range

When sunset minted gold in shimmering bars.

All eager eyed I've sailed from ports of Spain

And watched the flashing topaz of the Main

When dawn was flinging witch fire on the spars.

I am content in dreams to roam my fill

The vagrant, drifting sport of wind and tide,

Slave of the greater freedom, venture's thrill;

Here every magic ship on which I ride.

Gold, green, blue, red, a priceless treasure trove,

More wealth than ever pirate dared to dream.

My hammock swings—about the world I rove.

The sunset's dusk, the dawning's glide and gleam,

Moon-dappled leaves are murmuring in the wind

Which whispers tales. Lo, Tyre is just behind,

Through seas of dawn I sail, Romance abeam.

The Alamo

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For days they ringed us with the flame

For days their swarming soldiers came

The battle wrack was gory

We perished in the smoke and flame,

To give the world their traitor shame

And our undying glory

Always Come Evening

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Riding down the road at evening with the stars or steed and shoon

I have heard an old man singing underneath a copper moon;

"God, who gemmed with topaz twilights, opal portals of the day,

"On our amaranthine mountains, why make human souls of clay?

"For I rode the moon-mare's horses in the glory of my youth,

"Wrestled with the hills at sunset-- till I met brass-tinctured Truth.

"Till I saw the temples topple, till I saw the idols reel,

"Till my brain had turned to iron, and my heart had turned to steel.

"Satan, Satan, brother Satan, fill my soul with frozen fire;

"Feed with hearts of rose-white women ashes of my dead desire.

"For my road runs out in thistles and my dreams have turned to dust.

"And my pinions fade and falter to the raven wings of rust.

"Truth has smitten me with arrows and her hand is in my hair--

"Youth, she hides in yonder mountains -- go and see her, if you dare!

"Work your magic, brother Satan, fill my brain with fiery spells.

"Satan, Satan, brother Satan, have known your fiercest Hells."

Riding down the road at evening when the wind was on the sea,

I have heard an old man singing, and he sang most drearily

Strange to hear, when dark lakes shimmer to the wailing of the loon,

Amethystine Homer singing under evening's copper moon.

Ambition

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Build me a gibbet against the sky,

Solid and strong and long miles high,

Let me hang where the high winds blow

That never stoop to the world below,

And the great clouds lumber by.

Let the people who toil below

See me swaying to and fro,

See me swinging the aeons through,

A dancing dot in the distant blue.

An American

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Sing of my ancestors!

Sing of them with pride!

Sing of fair America,

Green prairies and blue tide!

One was born in County Cork!

Hail the shamrock green!

(One was named Abraham

Simeon Levine.)

One held rule in Dundee,

Friend of the Montrose.

(One sold nuts and apples

Where the river Tiber flows.)

One drank ale in Devonshire,

One scaled Lomond's crags.

(One grew up in Warsaw

And peddled clothes and rags.)

One sailed out from Liverpool,

Bold and free and glad.

(One lended cash at high

Rates in Petrograd.)

Och, oi, oi, and hoot mon!

Gott sie dank go bragh!

Gevald! Be dommed! Diavoli!

America iss braw!

Shure, its meself thot loves the land,

Vy shouldn't I? Oi oi!

Some fellow he no lika diss,

I'm nae you kind o' boy!

Its aiche mon for his ain, py hell!

A feller got to stand

An' tella people who he iss

And brag on his own land!

Vun nation unt vun langvitche!

Oi! And go for business fine

To Michael Israel Malcolmsky

Gammettio O'Stein.

An American Epic

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The autumn sun was gettin' low, the day was mighty windy,

When Hiram shot the hired man that kissed his girl Dorindy.

Them two was in the orchard there,

for apples birds was peckin'

When old man Hiram hove in view

and busted up their neckin'.

The hired man he took it out across the fields and ditches

But Hiram drawed a perfect bead

and shot him in the breeches.

The hired man he flagged it on, for he knew other ladies—

But Robert Frost can write the rest, or he can go to Hades.

Arcadian Days

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Back in days of green Arcady when the world was young and free,

I toiled for gold in the days of old, in Arcady, green Arcady.

Mighty-thewed, mape-limbed, in the world-dawn haze,

For I was a sword-smith in those old, gold days,

Early in the morning, how my sledge would clang!

Through the sapphire evening how the red sparks sprang!

How my hammer boomed on bronze hilt and shaft!

How the anvil clashed, and the forge, how it laughed.

Glowing through the dusk of the whispering night,

Beating up the morning with its rose-red light!

But Zeus! How I labored! And Jove! How I sweat!

And I grumbled o’er my anvil with a fume and a fret.

For I rose at the dawn and I labored like a slave

For nobles that cursed me for a fool and a knave;

Until late at night and to my hut I’d gone,

To rise again, to toil again with the coming of the dawn.

Mountains on the sky-line, whisper of the sea,

Croon of the nightwind, they all called to me!

And I thrilled at the vistas that swept down the gorge,

For poetry was in me—but it sweltered at the forge.

So I grumbled as I hammered o the sullen metal stark

And I loomed through the smoke like a goblin of the dark.

And the grimy soot caked on the hair of my arms

And I cursed at the yokels plodding in from the farms.

Plodding from the farms and the vineyards on the hill

With the wine of the grape and the golden apple-mill,

As close by the forge, they’d stop a-gape to stare

At my long ape-arms and my wild, shaggy hair.

O’er my slanting forehead the mane tumbled down

And my small simian-eyes glowered back with a frown.

Short and swart and mighty, muscles like an ape,

I glowered at the yokels who stared all a-gape.

As day on day I labored with the loud anvil clang

And often with the measure in a roaring voice I sang:

(Deep bass below from a hairy chest,

Timbered with the anvil and the roar of the forge

Making up for rhythm with a red-blood zest

Wild as a hill-wind that roars through a gorge.)

“Brass for a peasant, gold for a king!

“And bronze for a warrior where the broadswords sing!

“Golden hafted, brazen shafted, ho! A kingly sword!

“Fit for a knight to make a stand with such brand in his hand

“’Gainst a horde!

“Then ho and ho again! for the anvils roar!

“For the clamor of the hammer and the metal-workers’ lore!

“A helmet for a chief and a cuirass for a lord!

“For a king’s own hand, a golden hilted sword!

“Ho! And ho! And ha!”

The sun like a gold thing floated on the high

And the green woodlands ran to the blue, dreaming sky.

The hills in the distance loomed up like gods

And the wood-deer scampered in the sun’s red rods.

And a rill down the hill, it danced and it sung,

But I toiled and I cursed where the forge smoke hung.

Then suddenly I turned, and you were standing there,

With a lyre in your fingers and a garland on your hair.

Tall, slim and lithe, like a white limbed god,

Twirling in your fingers a garland’s Dion’s rod.

And you were scarcely steady from your liking of vine,

Your garment was a kirtle and your breath was scented wine.

And you glanced at the forge and you glanced at me,

And you strummed on your lyre and laughed with glee.

Your laughter was like music, your voice like a rhyme,

As you sang, clear and strong, like a far, golden chime;

“Gold morn’s laughing o’er the ocean, dawn’s awhisper on the sea!

“And a silver brook is brawling, with its tiny cat’ract falling,

“From the woodlands Pan is calling, come away, with me!

“Come away! Come away! Where the wood nymphs laugh at play!

“There are trails through sapphire meadows, night times soft with laughing shadows,

“Emerald isles in topaz oceans where the mermaids flash in spray!

“Come away! Pan is prancing! Come away! The fauns are dancing!

“And it’s my good time I’m wasting as I pause to sing this lay!

“Come to the woodlands, away and away!”

You were the wind’s song, (starlight in your hair!)

I harkened to your singing, with wonder all a-stare.

Then to my forge I whirled and I gripped a mighty sledge

And I smashed the mighty anvil and flung it to the hedge.

I whirled on high the hammer and I hurled in the rill,

And the bellows and the forge I tumbled down the hill.

In the gold of the morning, my soul soared free,

And I laughed like a giant, and you laughed with me.

* * *

And your laughter was a chime, was the ripple of the rill,

As through the golden morning, we strode down the hill.

Your lyre was a breath from the far, far seas!

(Ah, your hair in the sunlight as it floated in the breeze!)

On my bow-legs I followed, wonder in my eyes,

All a-gape with wonder at your songs and your lies,

Tales of sea and city, and far, strange lands,

(Music of the gods from your slim, strong hands.)

Poems at your finger tips, jests on all you saw,

And each jest I greeted with uproarious guffaw.

As through the sapphire woodland we strode to meet the dawn

On the roads o’ morning like a satyr and a faun.

* * *

The white roads o’ morning, the ages golden truth.

We walked in green Arcady when the world was wild with youth.

Arkham

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Drowsy and dull with age the houses blink

On aimless streets the rat-gnawed years forget-

But what inhuman figures leer and slink

Down the old alleys when the moon has set?

At The Bazaar

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There breaks in the bazaar of Zanzibar,

red surge of life on life;

At eve there came through the sunset's flame

a man with a dripping knife.

"Eunuchs a score and seven more

I've made today," said he,

"The blood and tears of all my years

I've caused would fill a sea.

"Search far, search far from Zanzibar

for youths of many lands

"For my hungry steel and the glee I feel

when they writhe beneath my hand

He laid him down where the stains lay brown

on the floor of the gelding room,

And his gory blade as it down was laid

clanged like a tone of doom.

In sleep he leered and clawed his beard

with fingers black with gore;

The ghosts of dead men came from Hell

and staked him to the floor.

“Aw Come On And Fight!”

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On my hands and knees in a scarlet pool

I heard the referee toll,

And the crowd roared: "Kill the yellow bum!"

Like the sea along a shoal.

I sprang, I struck, I crushed his skull

With a sudden desperate swing,

He died with his eyes to the glaring lights

And his back to the canvassed ring.

The referee counted above the dead,

I swayed and clung to the ropes,

And the crowd roared: "Yellow! Both of em's bums!"

Like the seas on the beaches slopes.

Babel

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Now in the gloom the pulsing drums repeat,

And all the night is filled with evil sound;

I hear the throbbing on inhuman feet

On marble stairs that silence locks around.

I see black temples loom against the night,

With tentacles like serpents writhed afar,

And waving in a dusky dragon light

Great moths whose wings unholy tapers char.

Red memory on memory, tier on tier,

Builds up a tower, time and space to span;

Through world on world I rise, and sphere on sphere,

To star-shot gulfs of lunacy and fear—

Black screaming ages never dreamed by man.

Was this your plan, foul spawn of cosmic mire,

To freeze my soul to stone and icy fire,

To carve me in the moon that all mankind

May know its race is futile, weak and blind—

A horror-blasted statue in the sky,

That does not live and nevermore can die?

The Ballad of Abe Slickemmore

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Guzzle your beer, you lazy louse!

Boast of your lack of knowledge,

And you may go to the bawdy house

But I shall go to college!

A Ballad of Insanity

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Adam was my ball-and-chain,

A tall short mule,

A walking red olay tennis court

In Eden’s judgment pool.

He tore the dubious petticoat

From Eve’s sequestered hips,

Oh, Adam was my elephant

Upon the sea in ships.

The Ballad of Monk Kickawhore

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My brother, he was a keg of beer,

And he spoke with a rotten grammar,

He was quick with his rump as a pitching steer

When he got some girl to ram her.

My sister she would never behave,

Went with the friend of a neighbor,

And he was a pimp and a lowlife knave—

And so she came to her labor.

Some are cradled in silks anon,

And petted and fed on candy,

But I was laid on a demijohn

And all that I drank was brandy.

Some are crummy from dusk till morn,

But none was ever so crummy,

For bastards along my trail were born

Till the Devil himself got chummy.

And I remember a household tough,

And a brother prone to trifle—

But he married a girl who lived on snuff

When her uncle came with a rifle.

And I remember the kitchen wench

Who was Swedish and short and stocky,

And the parties we had on the kitchen bench

Ere I heard of the gonococci.

And how we wriggled and writhed and twitched

Till the kitchen started reeling,

And how she giggled and bucked and pitched

Till my rump went up to the ceiling.

When I grew tall as an army mule

My brother had little to show me,

For I was an expert with my tool

With the proper wench below me.

I travelled far and I took each chance—

Slept with the English wenches,

And jazzed in public all over France

Under the bar-room benches.

Till I lost my virtue and found my mate

A girl with a lisp and a stammer,

And she was built to accommodate

A man with a ten foot rammer.

We slept off our drunks in stables of France,

Fought with the hogs and ganders,

And she left the seat of her under-pants

On the end of a bar in Flanders.

She was so hot that she’d make you melt

Some times on the nose I’d bust her,

And I made her wear a chastity belt

For I knew that I could not trust her.

My tool was sore and it made me frown,

For I knew I shouldn’t abuse it,

But I could not stop when her drawers were down,

Though it hurt like Hell to use it.

Till I took me a new girl out one night,

And we got heated and gay there,

But my wife came down with a swinging right

And knocked me flat as I lay there.

Her high heels beat out a wild tattoo

As she danced upon my belly,

She kicked my rear both black and blue

And beat me into a jelly.

And your girl’s easy where mine was rough,

My brother so slick and sappy,

But mine has a form and yours dips snuff,

And I’ll bet, begob, she’s clappy.

The Custom House on the French Frontier

I passed with my drunken soul-mate,

And they took her drawers for a souvenir

And hung them over the toll-gate.

The Belgian women raised a row

When she kicked them on their bustles,

And she tried to ride a milking cow

In a tavern-yard in Brussels.

The Coblenz wenches raised merry Hell

When she said they all were strumpets—

And how you departed I may not tell,

But we left town with trumpets.

I lay on a couch with a ticklish whore,

For her price I did not haggle

She took all I had and wanted more,

But I was limp as a raggle.

Go jazz your wenches and go to Hell,

I want no whores around me,

For I hid in the room of a high hotel

But my goddam wife has found me.

The Bombing of Gon Fanfew

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A gang of the Reds were hanging a Jew

In the Murderer’s Rest Saloon

And the girl at the accordion

Was whanging, “The Devil’s Own Tune”;

Over by the Hangman’s Counter

Sat Anarchist Gon Fanfew

Notching the ears of his light-o’-love,

A murderess known as Lou.

When out of the night where the bullets hummed,

Into the smoking dive

A stranger shot his way within,

Waving a forty-five.

He came with a run as he pulled his gun

And he fired shot three or four

And then he gathered the bodies up

And hove them out the door.

He cut the throat of the music-girl

And sat down on the stool

And if that fellow couldn’t play,

Well, I’m a Royal fool.

He played such tunes as the “Cutthroat’s League”

And “The Murderer’s March” and then

He swung into a tune of his own,

’Twas much like “The Devil’s Den”.

He played of the far-famed “good-old-days”

Sweethearts and lover’s moon,

And as he played we seemed to see

A snug and cozy saloon.

And the rush of the Royal troops,

He shifted the accordion screws,

“No work, no pay!” it seemed to say,

And we shrieked our lust for booze.

And then the stranger wheeled about

And he pulled out his gun,

“And boys,” said he, “you don’t know me

But you will before I’m done.”

“I’ve got some word I wish to say

And they are but a few

But one of you is a bourgeoisie

And that one is Gon Fanfew!”

I ducked and somebody set off a fuse

Two bombs blazed in the dark

Somebody started throwing knives

And guns began to bark.

Somebody blew the roof clear off

And the Northern Lights streamed in

Somebody set the saloon on fire

And splashed the walls with gin.

Pitched on his head and widely spread

Lay Anarchist Gon Fanfew

And there with the stranger’s head in her hand

Lay the woman known as Lou.

But The Hill Were Ancient Then

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Now is a summer come out of the sea,

And the hills that were bare are green.

They shower the petals and the bee

On the valleys that laze between.

So it was in the dreaming past,

And life is a shifting maze,

Summer on summer fading fast,

In a mist of yesterdays.

Out of the East, the tang of smoke,

The flight of the startled deer,

A ringing axe the silence broke,

The tread of the pioneer.

Saxon eyes in a weathered face,

Cabins where trees had been,

Hard on the heels of a fading race,

But the hills were ancient then.

Up from the South a haze of dust,

The pack mules' steady pace,

Armor tarnished and red with rust,

Stern eyes in a sun-bronzed face.

The mesquite mocked the flag of Spain,

That the wind flung out again,

The grass bent under the pack mule train—

But the hills were ancient then.

The Chinese Gong

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StrumaSTRUM, struma strum struma strum strum strum!

Roaring out the rally o’er the rumble of the drum!

Talking down the cannon with its boomaloomaboom!

Catchee plentee killee on the river plentee soon!

Shouting down to Canton with the Yellow River scum

Shaking coral buttons in a Holy City room.

Stroomabooma stroomabooma boom boom boom!

Daring decent devils like demoniacal doom.

Soom plentee plunder ‘long the Yellow River’s junks!

Hoomalooma hoomalooma strum stroom strum!

Streaming from the mountains are a million yellow monks.

Sellee loot to Melican and catchee plentee rum.

Yellow feet a-clatter on the clumpy cobbled street

Shouting of the shikars where the shore and river meet.

Roaring at the rumor of a raiding rider seen.

Lanterns in pagodas with a glimmer blue and green.

Sellee loot to Melican, chatchee Hong Kong.

—Yelling tinkling tales to a terrible tong.

Struma strooma strumastrooma kongalongbong!

Listen to the clatter of the Chinese gong.

The Choir Girl

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I have a saintly voice, the people say;

With Elder Blank I send the music winging—

I smile and compliment him on his singing—

By God, I'd rather hear a jackass bray.

I nod and smile to all the pious sisters—

I wish their rears were stung with seven blisters.

That youthful minister, so straight and slim—

I'd trade my soul for one long night with him.

Crete

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The green waves wash above us

Who slumber in the bay

As washed the tide of ages

That swept our race away.

Our cities - dusty ruins;

Our galleys - deep sea slime;

Our very ghosts, forgotten,

Bow to the sweep of Time.

Our land lies stark before it

As we to alien spears,

But, ah, the love we bore it

Outlasts the crawling years.

Ah, jeweled spires at even -

The lute's soft golden sigh -

The Lion-Gates of Knossos

When dawn was in the sky.

Dead Man’s Hate

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They hanged John Farrel in the dawn amid the marketplace;

At dusk came Adam Brand to him and spat upon his face.

"Ho neighbors all," spake Adam Brand, "see ye John Farrel's fate!

"Tis proven here a hempen noose is stronger than man's hate!

For heard ye not John Farrel's vow to be avenged upon me

Come life or death? See how he hangs high on the gallows tree!"

Yet never a word the people spoke, in fear and wild surprise-

For the grisly corpse raised up its head and stared with sightless eyes,

And with strange motions, slow and stiff, pointed at Adam Brand

And clambered down the gibbet tree, the noose within its hand.

With gaping mouth stood Adam Brand like a statue carved of stone,

Till the dead man laid a clammy hand hard on his shoulder bone.

Then Adam shrieked like a soul in hell; the red blood left his face

And he reeled away in a drunken run through the screaming market place;

And close behind, the dead man came with a face like a mummy's mask,

And the dead joints cracked and the stiff legs creaked with their unwonted task.

Men fled before the flying twain or shrank with bated breath,

And they saw on the face of Adam Brand the seal set there by death.

He reeled on buckling legs that failed, yet on and on he fled;

So through the shuddering market-place, the dying fled the dead.

At the riverside fell Adam Brand with a scream that rent the skies;

Across him fell John Farrel's corpse, nor ever the twain did rise.

There was no wound on Adam Brand but his brow was cold and damp,

For the fear of death had blown out his life as a witch blows out a lamp.

His lips were writhed in a horrid grin like a fiend's on Satan's coals,

And the men that looked on his face that day, his stare still haunts their souls.

Such was the fate of Adam Brand, a strange, unearthly fate;

For stronger than death or hempen noose are the fires of a dead man's hate.

The Deed Beyond The Deed

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Rane o’ the Sword, wha’ men misca’ the fool,

Has turned his galley to the unco’ lands;

Now in the dragon girten prow he stands.

Billows abune the token o’ his rule,

Great fold on fold, the rover’s banner spread.

The hard neives dirl the ash ayint the tide

The war shields klish amain alang the side,

The red moon hammers dune a sea o’ red.

Rane o’ the Sword, nae sairly do we greet

To see your taps’yls scuddin’ dune the west,

Nae muckle love bear we for a’ your breed—

Bluid willna dry like water—yet ’tis meet

We gi’ ye due, that curious unrest

Wha’ gars ye seek the deed beyant the deed.

TRANSLATION:

Rane of the Sword, whom men miscall the fool,

Has turned his galley to the unknown lands;

Now in the dragon-girded prow he stands.

Billows above the token of his rule,

Great fold on fold, the rover’s banner spread.

The hard hands thrust the oars against the tide

The war shields thrum their might along the side,

The red moon hammers down a sea of red.

Rane of the Sword, we sorely weep with fright

To see your topsails scudding down the west,

No great love do we bear for all your breed—

Blood will not dry like water—yet, ’tis right

We give you due, that curious unrest

That goads you seek the deed beyond the deed.

Deeps

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There is a cavern in the deep

Beyond the sea-winds brawl;

Where the hills of the sea slope high and steep,

And dragons sleep

And serpents creep

There is a cavern in the deep

Where strange sea-creatures crawl.

Dreamer

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I live in a world apart

A world that has no link with this drab earth.

A vague, melodious world, where breezes start

Soft joys and gay-hued mirth.

Dreaming

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The Dreamer dreamed in the shade of the vine,

The Seeker rode in the sun;

They are parted by winds and lands and brine,

But their lives cling and their souls twine

Till the last of the day is done.

For the Seeker dreams when the cold stars shine,

And the Dreamer seeks for his soul in wine

And dream and seeking must meet and twine

Or ever the day is done.

Dreaming on Downs

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I marched with Alfred when he thundered forth

To break the crimson standards of the Dane;

I saw the galleys looming in the north

And heard the oar-locks and the sword's refrain.

And far across the pleasant Wessex downs

The chanting of the spearmen broke the lyre,

Till where the black thorn forest grimly frowns

We sang a song of doom and steel and fire.

Death rode his pale horse through the dreaming sky

All through that long red summer afternoon,

And night and silence fell, when silently

The dead men lay beneath a cold white moon.

Now Alfred sleeps with all the swords of yore,

(But o'er the downs a brooding shadow glides)

Untrampled flowers dream along the shore,

And Guthrum's galleys rust beneath the tides.

Now underneath this drowsy tree I lie

And turn old dreams upon my lazy knees,

Till ghostly giants fill the sumer sky

And phantom oars awake the sleeping seas.

Dreams of Nineveh

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Silver bridge in a broken sky,

Golden fruit on a withered bough,

Red-lipped slaves that the ancients buy—

What are the dreams of Nineveh now?

Ghostly hoofs in the brooding night

Beat the bowl of the velvet stars.

Shadows of spears when the moon is white

Cross the sands with ebony bars.

But not the shadows that brood her fall

May check the sweep of the desert fire,

Nor a dead man lift up a crumbling wall,

Nor a spectre steady a falling spire.

Death fires rise in the desert sky

Where the armies of Sargon reeled;

And though her people still sell and buy,

Nineveh's doom is set and sealed.

Silver mast with a silken sail,

Sapphire seas 'neath a purple prow,

Hawk-eyed tribes on the desert trail—

What are the dreams of Nineveh now?

Drummings on an Empty Skull

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This is the word that Jacob

Meeting his death in Egypt

Laid on the brow of Judah,

Lion of all the earth:

“Nations shall bow before thee,

“All of thy brothers shall praise thee,

“Fruit on thy boughs shall blossom,

“Tribes from thy loins have birth.”

Sing-song chants from the ghettoes,

Tell of a thin limbed people,

Crowded into their hovels,

Rats who blink at the sun—

Where is thy heritage, Judah?

Lost in the mists of ages.

These are a bastard motley,

Ghosts of a race long run.

Easter Island

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How many weary centuries have flown

Since strange-eyed beings walked this ancient shore,

Hearing, as we, the green Pacific's roar,

Hewing fantastic gods from sullen stone!

The sands are bare; the idols stand alone.

Impotent 'gainst the years was all their lore:

They are forgot in ages dim and hoar;

Yet still, as then, the long tide-surges drone.

What dreams had they that shaped these uncouth things?

Before these gods what victims bled and died?

What purple galleys swept along the strand

That bore the tribute of what dim sea-kings?

But now, they reign o'er a forgotten land,

Gazing forever out beyond the tide.

Empire’s Destiny

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Bab-ilu's women gazed upon our spears,

And roses flung, and sang to see us ride.

We built a glory for the marching years

And starred our throne with silver nails of pride.

Our horses' hoofs were shod with brazen fears:

We laved our hands in blood and iron tears,

And laughed to hear how shackled kings had died.

Our chariots awoke the sleeping world;

The thunder of our hoofs the mountains broke;

Before our spears were empires' banners furled

Amd death and doom and iron winds were hurled,

And slaughter rode before, and clouds and smoke--

Then in the desert lands the tribes awoke

And death and vengeance 'round our walls were whirled.

Oh Babylon, lost Babylon! Where now

The opal altar and the golden spire,

The tower and the legend and the lyre?

Oh, withered fruit upon a broken bough!

The sobbing desert winds still whisper how

The sapphire city of the gods' desire

Fell in the smoke and crumbled in the fire;

And lizards bask upon her columns now.

Now poets sing her golden glory gone;

And Babylon has faded with the dawn.

Eternity

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I am older than the world:

Older than life.

The race of man is a babe in the cradle of Time.

I am Alpha and Omega.

The first and the last;

The circle without end.

I am a serpent with its tail in its mouth;

I am a triangle whose tips overlap a circle.

I am the older sister of Destiny.

Before man was, I was:

And after man has vanished from the Universe, I will be.

Time is a phantom, built by the mind of man;

There is no Time.

The thing that men call Time flies before my wind;

Time has beginning, duration, ending.

I am that which was, is and shall be;

Unceasing, Neverending, Eternal.

Number all the sands of all the shores of all the worlds

Of all the Universes.

And let each sand represent a million centuries;

And they all shall not be a single instant

Of Eternity.

For I am numberless and unnumbered,

Eternity had no beginning nor shall there be ending.

I am Alpha and Omega.

That which was, is and shall be;

Numberless and unnumbered.

Fables For Little Folk

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He was six foot four and wide as a door

And he weighed two hundred pounds

And he laughed as he spoke, "I’ll cool that bloke.

I’ll flatten him in two rounds."

Ah, the crowd they cheered, but the crowd they jeered

When his foeman stepped in the ring;

They hissed and jowled and the giant scowled

And rushed with a round-house swing.

Yes, he came full tilt but the beans were spilt

For the smaller man timed him fair

And knocked him out with a left hand clout

And the crowd gave him the air.

So the moral is this: make your foeman miss

And never lead with your right,

But the first that you’re to do is be sure

That it’s not Jack Dempsey you fight.

“Feach Air Muir Lionadhi Gealach Buidhe Mar Or”

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Mananan Mac Lir

The son of the sea

Is sib unto me

At the break of the year.

In the white autumn tides

The ghost drums call

When the midnights fall,

And the ghost ship rides

Where the green waves crawl.

I break the loam

By a Kerry hill—

They beckon me still

Through the purple gloam;

Strange eyes in the foam.

The sea-wind chills

The crumbling stones,

And a ghost harp moans

In the shadowy hills.

But a white sail fills

And a sweep-head drones.

The great white oars

They gleam and bend

And the west wind roars

From the blue world's end;

They call me like a friend,

Forgotten shores.

Flaming Marble

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I carved a woman out of marble when

The walls of Athens echoed to my fame,

And in the myrtle crown was shrined my name.

I wrought with skill beyond all mortal ken.

And into cold inhuman beauty then

I breathed a touch of white and living flame --

And from her pedestal she rose and came

To snare the souls and rend the hearts of men.

Without a soul, without a human heart

She shattered mortal love and mortal pride

And even I fell victim to my art,

With bitter joyless love I took my bride.

And still with frozen hate that never dies

She sits and stares at me with icy eyes.

Forbidden Magic

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There came to me a Man one summer night,

When all the world lay silent in the stars,

And moonlight crossed my room with ghostly bars.

He whispered hints of weird, unhallowed sight;

I followed – then in waves of spectral light

Mounted the shimmery ladders of my soul

Where moon-pale spiders, huge as dragons, stole –

Great forms like moths, with wings of wispy white.

Around the world the sighing of the loon

Shook misty lakes beneath the false-dawn’s gleams;

Rose tinted shone the sky-line’s minaret;

I rose in fear, and then with blood and sweat

Beat out the iron fabrics of my dreams,

And shaped of them a web to snare the moon.

The Gates of Ninevah

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These are the gates of Nineveh: here

Sargon came when his wars were won

Gazed at the turrets looming clear

Boldly etched in the morning sun

Down from his chariot Sargon came

Tossed his helmet upon the sand

Dropped his sword with its blade like flame

Stroked his beard with his empty hand

"Towers are flaunting their banners red

The people greet me with song and mirth

But a weird is on me," Sargon said

"And I see the end of the tribes of earth"

"Cities crumble, and chariots rust

I see through a fog that is strange and gray

All kingly things fade back to the dust

Even the gates of Nineveh"

Girl

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Gods, what a handsome youth across the way.

What shall I do to make him notice me?

I must not be too obvious—there

I'll shift my dress, demurely and let him see

A quick glance of an ankle very trim;

Then blush and smooth my skirts down hastily

As if 'twere unintentional—Hell!

The fool's not even got his eyes on me.

A Great Man Speaks

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They set me up on high, a marble saint,

As if to guard the virtue of the park.

My flanks are gaunt, my gaze is cold and stark,

For I must look the part the liars paint,

They've cleansed my history of fleshy taint.

The elders bid the younger people mark

How virtuous I gleam against the dark—

Could I but speak I'd make the bastards faint.

Great God, how could they know the lusty zest,

The love of life that made my sinews dance?—

Below me now, against my base, inert,

A lousy tramp, a sleeping house-maid rest,

I yearn for that square flask in his old pants.

My fingers burn to feel beneath her skirt.

The Grey Lover

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Lover, grey lover, your arms are about me

Through your green billows I sink to my rest;

Never again shall futilities flout me

Rousing dim torments to harry my breast.

Royal lost galleys about me are riding

Tides ever surging their sea treasures bring.

Here shall I slumber the years without number,

Dreaming unharried like some magic king.

The Harp of Alfred

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I heard the harp of Alfred

As I went o'er the downs,

When thorn-trees stood at even

Like monks in dusky gowns;

I heard the music Guthrum heard

Beside the wasted towns:

When Alfred, like a peasant,

Came harping down the hill,

And the drunken danes made merry

With the man they sought to kill,

And the Saxon king laughed in their beards

And bent them to his will.

I heard the harp of Alfred

As the twilight waned to night;

I heard ghost armies tramping

As the dim stars flamed white;

And Guthrum walked at my left hand,

And Alfred at my right.

High Blue Halls

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There’s a kingdom far from the sun and star

With never a wind to dree;

Where the golden balls of the silence falls

In the high blue halls of the sea.

There’s death to change in that kingdom strange,

For its days are all the same;

Its blue floors blaze in a golden maze

Through a purple haze of flame.

Through an emerald sheen dim shapes careen

And white limbs trail and quiver;

In rose pale fire ’round spear and spire

In white desire they shiver.

There’s never a tree for eye to see

But ever in ghostly showers

Great petals white drift down the night

Like a wild delight of flowers.

There’s a kingdom dim ’neath a ghost tree’s limb,

That throbs eternally,

Life’s furtherest halls where magic calls

In the high blue halls of the sea.

How to Select a Successful Evangelist

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First, find a man who has a goodly voice,

Whose yell shall shake the very topmost spire

When he proclaims some rival rev a liar.

Pass up the knowledge if he has the noise.

Next, see he mixes freely with the boys.

A man with carefully concealed desire,

But one whose sex appeal is like a fire—

Then he is sure of all the women’s choice.

Yet let him be discreet—Let not a rumor

Attend his trail. Let him condemn all thought

Most loudly as the evil he has fought.

Enough vulgarity to pass as humor.

He shall be sure then, gathering the tin

And lead ten thousand from the ways of sin.

Illusion

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I stood upon surf-booming cliffs

And heard the tide-race roaring, roaring strong and deep and free;

On tall wind wings the white clouds sudded by.

Far to the eat the ocean met the sky

And the booming cliffs re-echoed to the thunder of the sea.

Green are the waves and fringed with white the crest:

Strong colour contrasts, turquoise, sapphire, now.

Tumbling the jade green billows from the west

Roars the wild sea-wind. Keep your sea. I go.

Stranger to me the fierce red-blooded zest,

The wild beast urge, the primitive behest.

Fierce primal impulses are thoughts I do not know.

I've ever dwelt 'mid worlds of vaguer tone,

All tints and colors merging soft and dim,

No garish flare of reds at the desert's rim—

The sea-winds murmur there a pleasing drone;

The sea-fogs grace the ocean, friendly, grey.

'Mid soft-hued woodlands shy nymphs have their play.

Ad so I'll none of all this garish joy,

These blazing dawns that leap like maids o'er-bold;

The flaming greens and reds and yellows cloy,

Barbaric tints of crimson, blazing gold.

The worlds I seek are like soft, golden chimes;

Soft merging tints that match the breeze's croon

And no false note plays in the world-scheme rhymes—

I seek soft, vague plateaus of the moon.

Ivory in the Night

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Maidens of star and of moon,

born from the mists of the age,

I thrill to the touch of your hands,

in the night when the shadows are o'er me.

Your eyes are like the gulfs of the night,

your limbs are like ivory gleaming—

But your lips are more red than is mortal,

and pointed the nails of your fingers.

Jack Dempsey

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Through the California mountains

And many a wooded vale

The wind from seaward whispers

The name of the Nonpareil

O'er many a peak snow covered

O'er many a woodland fair

The sea-breeze murmurs the wonderful tale

Of the lad from County Clare.

But never the wind from seaward

And never the brooks of the vale

Can speak the half of the glory,

The due of the Nonpareil.

Champion of all Champions,

Greatest in all times' bound,

The lad who held Fitzsimmons

For thirteen gory rounds.

But the ring's red history passes

To a swiftly roving tale,

And there's few who now remember

The name of the Nonpareil.

But here's to the greatest of fighters,

To a name that never shall fail,

To the name of the first Jack Dempsey

The wonderful Nonpareil.

John Kelley

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I hesitate to name your name,

John Kelley,

For I shrink from obscenity.

I hope you feel white,

After pilloring a child before a snarling pack

Of yellow-bellied swine, who after all,

Were whiter at heart than you, John Kelley.

You should feel proud, Honorable sir,

For the dung you have cast into the faces

Of the American people;

For the blow you have dealt at American womanhood,

And the woman-hood of your own color and race,

John Kelley.

You have betrayed the women of your race,

John Kelley,

And if you had the soul of a man instead of a hog,

Your dreams would be haunted by dim shapes

And quivering shadows,

By tear-dimmed eyes and pale faces and slender white hands,

By all the dim women down all Eternity,

Who suffered and passed through the red portals of Hell

To give you being, John Kelley.

This is my word to you,

And may you remember it.

It is my hope that your yellow-bellied pets

Will deal with you some day as you have dealt with your own

People;

That they will nail you into a barrel

Full of razor blades

And roll you down a hill into hell, John Kelley.

John L. Sullivan

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Bellowing, blustering, old John L.

Fearing nothing 'tween sky and hell!

Rushing, roaring, swinging his right.

Smashing, crashing, forcing the fight.

Battering foes until they fell,

Tilt your glasses to old John L.!

Mitchell he knocked, from the ring clear out!

Dropped Kilrain with a single clout!

Laflin he beat and Burke he flayed,

Knocked out the Maori Giant, Slade!

Packed in each fist, damnation and hell!

Tilt your glasses to old John L.!

Old John L.'s in town today

He's hitting it down the Great White way.

Look at his swallow tail coat, silk hat!

Mustache too, say he's on a bat!

Living it in, that you can tell,

Tilt your glasses to old John L.!

He's cleaned out the roughest, toughest saloon,

He's licked O'Rourke and Jem McClune,

Sampled every saloon on the streets,

Buying drinks for all he meets,

He's taking the bowery in pell-mell!

Tilt your glasses to old John L.!

Stick in your head in the grog-shop door,

Look at him! Listen to his roar!

"Set out eh whiskey. Jimmy, ye bum!

Belly the bar, ye half bred scum!

I can lick any guy from here to hell!"

Tilt your glasses to old John L.!

The world moves on and the ring moves too

Old fighters have long given way to new.

But here;s a health to the olden days,

To the wild old, mad old, bad old ways,

When a fight was a fight and not a sell,

And tilt your glasses to old John L.

Kid Lavigne is Dead

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Hang up the battered gloves; Lavigne is dead.

Bold and erect he went into the dark.

The crown is withered and the crowds are fled,

The empty ring stands bare and lone—yet hark:

The ghostly roar of many a phantom throng

Floats down the dusty years, forgotten long.

Hot blazed the lights above the crimson ring

Where there he reigned in his full prime, a king.

The throngs’ acclaim roared up beneath their sheen

And whispered down the night: "Lavigne! Lavigne!"

Red splashed the blood and fierce the crashing blows.

Men staggered to the mat and reeling rose.

Crowns glittered there in splendour, won or lost,

And bones were shattered as the sledges crossed.

Swift as a leopard, strong and fiercely lean,

Champions knew the prowess of Lavigne.

The giant dwarf Joe Walcott saw him loom

And broken, bloody, reeled before his doom.

Handler and Everhardt and rugged Burge

Saw at the last his snarling face emerge

From bloody mists that veiled their dimming sight

Ere they sank down into unlighted night.

Strong men and bold, lay vanquished at his feet.

Mighty was he in triumph and defeat.

Far fade the echoes of the ringside’s cheers

And all is lost in mists of dust-dead years.

Cold breaks the dawn; the East is ghastly red.

Hand up the broken gloves; Lavigne is dead.

The Kissing of Sal Snooboo

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A bunch of the girls were whooping it up

In the old Lip-stick saloon,

And the kid at the player-piano

Was twanging a jazzy tune,

When out of the night with perfume on his shirt

And stacomb upon his hair,

A young man staggered inside the door

And meowed like a grizzly-bear.

He kicked the kid off the piano stool

And sat him down to play.

The piano yowled like an old tom cat

To the tune of "Hip! Hurray!"

Says he, "Gals, you don’t know me,

But, by gosh, I know you,

And one of you is a classy dame,

And that one is Sal Snooboo!"

She squawked and somebody turned the lights,

Something went "Smack!" in the dark.

There was nothing for anybody to do

But to stand still and s****** and hark.

Somebody turned the lights on,

And Sally was standing there,

But the stranger wasn’t; he was done,

And Sal was arranging her hair.

A Lady’s Chamber

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Orchid, jasmine and heliotrope

Scent the gloom where the dead men grope.

Silver, ruby-eyed leopards crouch

At the carven ends of the silken couch.

A purple mist of a perfume rare

Billows and sways, and weights the air.

The pale blue domes of the ceiling rise

Gemmed and carved like opium skies—

Golden serpents with crystal eyes.

Why should men grow strange and cold,

Like a marble heart in a breast of gold?

Their eyes are ice and they look strange tales,

They carve the mist with their long jade nails.

Orchid, jasmine and heliotrope

Scent the gloom where dead men grope;

They have stabbed their hearts with a golden sword

And hanged themselves with a silken rope.

Laughter

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Laughter's the lure of the gods; therefore must ye laugh

Mocking Destiny's nods, a strong wind driving the chaff

Lesbia

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From whence came this grim desire?

What was the wine in my blood?

What raced through my veins like fire

And beat at my brain like a flood?

Bare is the desert's dust,

Deep is the emerald sea—

Barer my deathless lust,

Deeper the hunger of me.

Goddess I sit and brood—

They cringe to my Hell-lit eyes,

The wretched women nude

I have gripped between my thighs.

As they writhed between my hands

And the ocean heard their screams

Firing my passion's brands

As I dreamed my lurid dreams.

Their breath came fast and hot,

Their tresses were Hades' mesh;

World and the worlds were not;

Flesh against pulsing flesh.

Their white limbs fluttered and tossed,

They whimpered beneath my grasp

And their maindenhood was lost

In strange unnatural clasp.

Hours my pleasure beguiled

The green Arcadian glades,

As idle mornings I whiled

With free-hipped country maids.

Under the star-gemmed skies

That looked upon curious scenes

I have spread the round white things

Of naked and frightened queens.

What was it turned my face

From brown-limbed Grecian boys,

Weary of their embrace

To darker and barer joys?

A miser weary of coins

I wearied of early charms,

Of youths who ungirt my loins,

Restless sighed in their arms.

With many a youth I lay,

But their wine to me was dregs.

I found scant joy in they

Who parted my supple legs.

I turned to the loves I prize;

Found joy amid perfumed curls,

In a maiden's amorous sighs,

In the tears of naked girls.

These are the wine of delight—

A girl's ungirdled charms,

A woman's laugh in the night

As she lies in my eager arms.

Goddess I sit and laugh,

Nude as the scornful moon—

World and the worlds are chaff

Say, shall my day be soon?

Libertine

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I set my soul to a wild lute

And taught my feet to dance.

I float, a broken straw,

Upon the Sea of Chance.

Life

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They bruised my soul with a proverb,

They bruised my back with a rod,

And they bade me bow to my elders,

For that was the word of God.

They pent up my soul and bound me

Till life was a living death,

They struck the wine from my fingers,

The passion from my breath.

I reached my hands to living,

They hurled me back into school,

And they said, "Go learn your lessons,

"You innocent young fool."

They yowled till they woke the trumpets --

And the sword blade rent the plow,

And they said, "It is your duty

"To die for your elders now."

They cowered far from the battle

As I went to the strife,

And I spilled my guts in the trenches

In the red dawn of my life.

And the elders named me hero,

But more than their words and ire

Was the scent of a strange wild flower

There where I died in the mire.

Lines to G. B. Shaw

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Oh, G.B.S., oh, G.B.S.,

You lousy son of a bitch,

You lift your yawp across the world

Like a bullfrog in a ditch.

I would that by foliage which

Your scholarly phizz thatches

Tied to a smoking stake you were

By a tribe of wild Apaches

You could deride them in that style

Of which you're so enamored,

While someone with a tomahawk

Your lordly cranium hammered.

And several thousand dancing braves,

The more the merrier,

Were sticking Spanish Daggers in

Your antequate posterior.

Lust

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I am a golden lure.

I am the laughter of false goddesses.

I go disguised as Love.

Men are my slaves.

Women are my slaves.

I am a goddess and the world is my shrine.

I am the night wind

Blowing through the leaves.

I am the moonlight of a hidden glade.

I am starlight

On a palace.

I am Lust.

The Madness of Cormac

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Lock your arm of iron

Around the reeling moon,

Draw your sword, the grey sword,

The sword of Fin, the fey sword,

Carved with a nameless rune.

Brace your feet like talons

On the dreaming world,

Break the shapes, the dread shapes,

The dragon-things, the red apes,

Out of the abyss hurled.

Ghosts of all the ages

Fill the ancient skies,

Red queens and white kings,

Nameless forms and night things,

Men fools and wise.

The Maiden of Kercheezer

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She was snoozing on her sweezer,

Many a goofish year ago,

And a smile was on her beezer,

As she gently scratched her toe.

She, the Maiden of Kercheezer,

Hair as black as a harness tug,

As is fluttered in the breezer,

O'er her lovely, girlish mug.

Evening dress of green and yeller,

What a shoulder she could shake

And she had a nifty feller,

Hight the knight of Duckandrake.

He was knock-kneed, she was cross-eyed,

Oh, they were a lovely pair,

How he'd fondly knock her hoss-eyed,

As she gently pulled out his hair.

And her folks didn't like his beezer,

But what difference did that make?

And the maiden of Kercheezer, ever

Eloped with noble Duckandrake.

A Mick in Israel

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Old King Saul was a bold old scut;

He rammed his sword in Ashdod’s gut.

The warriors of Gaza shook in their shoes,

Their fingers twitched till they spilled their booze.

And every hussy and every john

Shook at his name in Askalon.

The warriors of Gath went after him