CHAPTER XXIII

THE tide reached its full, shortly after two

o'clock, and then began to ebb. Almost at

once the little waves of the lagoon smoothed

out, they lapped no more against thp craggymargin, and the water lay like a sheet of gray

glass. I had seen the same transformation on

several previous occasions, but to-night it seemedto get hold of me as never before.

Seemingly it partook of a miraculous qualityto-night-as if winds had been suddenly stilledby a magician's art. The water was of courseflowing out between the crevices of the rockwall, yet there was no sense of motion. Thewater-line dropped slowly down.

It is an unescapable fact that the wholeatmosphere of the Ochakee country is one ofdeath. The moss-draped forests seem withoutlife, the rivers convey no sense of motion, theair is dead, and vegetation rots underfoot. To-night the lagoon was without any image or in-dication of life. The whole vista seemed like

some dead, forgotten wasteland in a dream-231

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a place where living things had never come andwas forever incompatible with life.

It was a mysterious hour. The half-crescentmoon rose at last, at first a silver tinting ofthe skyline, a steadily growing wave of lightand then the sharply outlined moon itself abovethe eastern forest. The dark shadows thatwere my companions took form, strengthened;again I could see their erect figures on the graycrags and the gleam of their rifles in theirarms. The perspective widened, the rock wallseemed to extend, stretch ever further acrossthe lagoon, and now the sky was graying in the

East.A moment later I heard Weldon's voice,

ringing full in the hush of the dying night, as

he spoke Slatterly's name. The latter answered

at once."Yes. What is it?""Let's go in. The night's over and nothing's

happened. It's pretty near bright day already."

It was true that the eastern sky had begun to

be tinged with gray. I could see the lines of my

hands and the finer mechanisms of the rifle.

The hour, however, seemed later than it really

was, simply because of the effulgence of themoon. The dread atmosphere of Kastle Kragshad in a moment been wholly destroyed. In-

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stead of a place of mystery and peril, it wassimply an old-time manor-house fronting thesea, built between the forest and a calm lagoon.

There didn't seem any use of watching fur-ther. If the night was not yet, in fact, com-

pletely over, the moon and the graying east gavethe effect of morning. Perhaps the fact thatthe outgoing tide had stilled the lagoon had itseffect too. The ominous sound of breaking waveswas gone, and it gave a perfect image of qui-etude and peace.

Slatterly waited an instant before he answered."Wait a little more," he said in a resigned tone."But you're right-it's almost morning."

I don't think it was five minutes later that Isaw Weldon leave his post and saunter over tothe sheriff's side. I suppose, bored with his task,the time seemed much longer to him. True, thelagoon was gray, the shadows of the gardenhad lost their mystery, and there didn't seemany use of waiting. Indeed, I don't think anyof us escaped a sense of inner embarrassment-something akin to ignominy and chagrin-thatwe should be standing beside that quiet water-body, with high-powered rifles in our hands. Itmade us feel secretly ridiculous.

Nopp called over, cheerily, "Through for thenight ?"

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"Might as well," Slatterly answered. "It wasa fool party anyway."

Very glad that the watch was over, I left myown post, and we had a cigarette apiece besidethe still lagoon. Then we went through thegardens to the house.

"We've disrupted the regular schedule, any-way," Nopp said. "I think we've come to theend of our trouble, and nothing more to fear.Man, do you think to-day will clear the thingup?"

"What chance is there to clear up such a messin one day ?" The sheriff spoke moodily.

"Because you're going to have some real help-not a lot of bungling amateurs. You knowwho's coming?"

"Lacone-Van Hope's detective.""Yes. He's a distinguished man-a real sci-

entist in the study of crime. He may do won-ders, even in one day."

"I only hope he does! I don't care who clearsit up-as long as it's cleared. Now to get alittle sleep."

Tired out, we went to our rooms. The coolof early morning had swept through the halls,and the first glimmer of dawn was at the win-dows. How white the moon was in the sky, howmysteriously gray the whole sweep of shore and

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sea So tired I dreaded the work of undressing,I sat down a moment before the window thatoverlooked the lagoon.

The moonlight and the dawn gave the ap-pearance of a mist, a gray mist as is sometimesseen over water when the sky is overcast withheavy clouds. At that moment it was impossibleto conceive of anything but grayness. The wholeconception that the brain had, the only inter-pretation that the senses made was of this same,lifeless hue. If an artist had tried to paint thepicture that was spread before my window hewould have needed but one tube of paint.

It was in some way vaguely startling. It wenthome to some dark knowledge within a man, andleft him fearful and expectant. The shore andthe sea were gray, the gardens were swept withgrayness, the lagoon itself had lost its manycolors and only the same neutral tint remained.The only way that the eye could distinguish shorefrom sea, and garden from shore, was the grada-tions of the same hue.

Surely dawn was almost at hand. The moonlooked less vivid in the sky. And nothing re-mained but to find what sleep I could.

But at that instant my senses quickened. Icould hardly call it a start-it was just a suddenwakening of mind and body. I wasn't the least

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sure. . . Perhaps in a moment the oldlull, the well-remembered sense of well-being andsecurity would return. It had seemed to methat a swift shadow glided through the graynessat the shore of the lagoon.

The window afforded a remarkably wideglimpse of that particular part of the estate.The rift in the trees permitted a view of scat-tered segments of the rock wall itself. And itwasn't to be that I could turn and leave themto the gray of morning. In that mysterious,eerie light I saw the whisking shadow again.

It was not merely some little creeping thingfrom the forest-some living creature such asstirs about at the first ray of dawn. The shadowwas much too large. I would have thought, atthe first glance, that it was the shadow of a man.But at that instant the figure emerged into theopen, and I knew the truth.

The trim form on the shore of the lagoon wasthat of Edith Nealman. I could see her outline

with entire plainness, dark against the gray.Some errand of stealth had taken her down tothe shore of the lagoon the moment that it wasleft unguarded.

In an instant she disappeared, and in the in-

terval I found out how deeply and inexplicablystartled I was. And then I saw her again, walk-

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ing out on the natural rock bridge, and carryingsome heavy object, that dragged on the rocks,in her arms.

I could see her stooped figure, and the shadowof the thing that dragged. And there is notelling under Heaven the thoughts and the ter-rors that swept through me as to what thatdragging thing might be.

But in an instant I saw what it was. It wasa rather long, heavy plank, certainly of wood.She was about two hundred feet out on the rockwall by now, and I saw that she was launchingthe plank to the right of the wall, in the waterof the lagoon. Before I could wonder or exclaimshe herself had slipped in with it, her arms palewhite from the shoulders of her dark bathingsuit, wading out and guiding the heavy plankbeside her.

No man who had read that mysterious scriptcould doubt what her purpose was. She hadgone fourteen rods out on the wall, and then shehad turned to the right into the lagoon. Plain-ly she was searching for Jason's treasure.

She, too, knew the key. In that same flashof time, I understood the look of intent I hadseen on her face earlier that night. She hadkept her resolve-even now she was herself try-ing to sound the mystery of her uncle's disap-

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pearance. I understood her own exultation whenI had talked of my many scientific plans, andhow I lacked means to carry them out. Eventhen she had likely been working on the crypto-gram. It was wholly possible that either Neal-man or herself had encountered a copy of thescript in the old house, and they had worked onit together.

But there had been some sort of a guard putover Jason's treasure! With what right hadwe been so smugly certain that the old legendwas not true-that there was not still some evil,tentacled monster of the deep left to slay anddrag to his cavern those that dared to penetratethe lagoon. Even now she was wading furtherand further from the rock wall. I could see

just her head and the top of her shouldersabove water, the heavy plank still guided besideher.

Fear is an emotion that speeds like lightningthrough the avenues of the nerves. In the in-

stant that these thoughts went home-thoughtsthat would have taken moments to narrate in

speech but which whipped through the mind in

the twinkling of an eye-I plumbed the utter

depths of fear. There can be no other word-

The gray expanse seemed the waters of deathitself; the whole scene, in the gray of dawn, was

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eerie, savage, unutterably dreadful. And thegirl that had come to be my own life was evennow wholly within the power of any monstrousfoe that should leave its cavern to attack her.

Why had we been so sure! Why hadn't weguarded those deadly waters every hour, day andnight. Every day teaches that many things thatseemed incredible a day ago are true: how hadwe dared to be so arrogant in regard to the leg-end of the lagoon. Even when three men, oneafter another, had disappeared without trace wehad refused to change our ancient habits ofthought: we had still refused to believe. I knewnow the fate of the missing men. They hadgone in search of Jason's chest-and the treasureguard that dwelt in the lagoon had put them todeath. And just before my eyes the girl I lovedwas following the path they made, making thesame quest.

And in that breathless, never-to-be-forgottenmoment, I heard a resounding splash of water.Against the craggy, opposite shore the waterflew far and white as some living thing that hadbeen concealed in the far crags dived toward herthrough the still waters of the lagoon.

The whole scene had seemingly occupied lessthan a second. Already, before I could breathe,I was leaping down the corridor towards the

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stairs. I called once for help-a door behindme opened. Then I was out in the gray dawn,racing toward the lagoon.

There seemed no interlude of time betweenthe instant that I saw that splashing water andthat in which I had plunged full into the graydepths myself. In reality there was a space ofseveral seconds-the gray light showed me thatthe drama of the lagoon had progressed immea-surably further. The girl was fifty or sixty feetfrom the rock wall now, just her head showingabove water, her arms locked tight about theplank and facing her approaching foe. Andsomething that swam swiftly made streamingripples toward her.

I swam with amazing ease and swiftness.The terror, innate love of life, were all forgottenin the hope that I might reach Edith's side intime. And now, by the gray light of dawn, I sawthat her foe was upon her.

They were struggling with a desperate frenzy,and for an instant the splashing water almostobscured them. The plank had been torn fromher grasp, and by some circumstance had beensped hopelessly out of her reach. And now,the water clearing from my eyes, I could deter-mine the identity of her assailant. No matterwhat further fate the lagoon had in store for

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her, this foe was human, at least. Terrible anddrawn with passion as it was, I saw the face ofMajor Kenneth Dell, the man who had disap-peared the preceding night.

I yelled, trying to give hope. Already I wasalmost upon them; and Dell had released hishold of the girl. Whatever had been his pur-pose it had been forgotten in the face of somegreater extremity. Their fight was no more witheach other: rather they seemed at death gripswith some resistless foe that tore at them frombeneath the waves.

I saw Dell's face. An unspeakable terror,that of one who in wickedness goes down to anawful death, was on his face. It was such aterror as men can know but once, for they neverlive to tell of it, and which blasts the heart ofany one that beholds it. No artist, delving intothe abnormal, could have portrayed that fear.It was a thing never to forget, but ever to seeagain in dreams.

Edith was terrified too, but such a terror asDell knew was impossible for her. The fear ofdeath that curses a godless man is perhaps themost dreadful retributive force in this world orthe next, and Dell knew it to the full. No onewho had seen his face could doubt but that allthe iniquity of a long life had been atoned for,

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in one little moment, in the scales of justice.But only a measure of it could oppress her. Theonly fear that her fine young soul could knowwas that born of the elemental love of life. Andwith what seemed to be a final effort she raisedher head to call a warning to me.

But even if I had heeded it, it would havecome too late. I saw the heads of the man andwoman in front of me go down as if drawn byquicksand. And there was no escape for me..The death that dwelt in the lagoon had alreadyseized me in its resistless grasp.

But the guard over Jason's treasure was notmerely some monster implanted from the sea, amortal thing that years could claim or muscularstrength oppose. Rather it was a power thathad dwelt there since the world's young days,ever claiming tribute, and which would continueon until the very sea itself was changed. Thedemon that had hold of me was merely that ofrushing waters. They swept me forward andsucked me down with remorseless force.

There was a sink-hole in the floor of thelagoon. No wonder the water that rushedin at high-tide had seemed to go so quietly away.I was being carried down a subterranean outlet,through some water passage under the rock wall,and into the open sea.