Down, down--then they shot upward, reached the surface; and
even as Cliff gulped a single gasping breath, something struck his
skull a blinding, stunning blow! The oars! With rapidly numbing arms and legs Cliff kicked and flailed the water,
striving for land. Dimly he knew he no longer held Vilma; dimly he
visioned her as were those ghastly undead; then his body scraped on
something hard, and a blackness that was not physical blotted out
consciousness. _2. The Dreadful Isle_

Red-hot hammers pounding against his temples wakened Cliff Darrell. He
opened his eyes to stare into total darkness crawling with mental
monsters spawned by his pain-stabbed brain. He lay half immersed in
shallow brine, his head resting on a jagged stone just above the
surface. Struggling to his hands and knees, he shook his head from
side to side, dumbly, like an animal in pain. Something had hit
him--and now he was in water--and there was no light. What had
happened? Where was Vilma? Vilma! He groaned. He remembered now. They had dropped--and his head
had struck something--and--and--maybe she was floating out there even
now, dead eyes staring upward. "Vilma!" he cried, his voice pleading. "Vilma!" Only a mocking echo answered him. There was no other sound, not even
the whisper of waves swishing among the rocks. Cliff pressed his hands fiercely against his throbbing head. The pain
had become a madness, matched only by the agony of his own
helplessness. He felt his reason reeling; he fought an insane desire
to fling himself shrieking into that silent expanse of water to search
for Vilma; then with a tremendous physical effort he jarred himself
back to sanity. He staggered to his feet, groped stumblingly over the rocks away from
the water. His hand touched a rock wall broken and pitted by the
action of the sea; and he crept slowly inland, feeling his way like a
blind man. As he plodded on his thoughts blended into one fixed idea:
he must get to light, must get light to search for Vilma. Gradually the insensate pounding in his head abated, and strength
returned to his body. When at last he saw light beyond a narrow
fissure around an angle in the cavern, he had almost recovered. In
moments he was gazing out over a plain bathed in the glow of a leprous
moon. As he stared, he shivered; and it was not because of the cold
draft drawing through the fissure, fanning his brine-drenched body. Grim and starkly forbidding the plain lay before him, dead as the
frozen landscape of the moon. Once there had been life there, but now
only the skeletons of trees remained, lifting their wasted limbs in
rigid pleading to an unresponsive sky. Some, there were, that had
fallen, uprooted by the fury of passing hurricanes; these lay like the
scattered bones of a dismembered giant, age-blackened, and painted
with hoarfrost by the brushes of moonlight. Feebly the dead forest
stirred under the touch of a moaning wind, and the gaunt shadows cast
by the trees seemed to be multi-armed monsters slithering over the
rocky earth. He looked beyond the trees, and he saw light. Little squares of pale
radiance cut high in the walls of an ancient black castle. Castle? Cliff frowned. He could liken it to nothing else, though he could not
recall ever having seen a castle which thrust curving, needle-thin
spires into the sky like a devil's horns. Impatiently Cliff stepped from the wall of rock and glanced along a
path that writhed through the forest; glanced--and crouched swiftly, a
low cry escaping him. A single spot of water on a smooth, flat stone! A spot shaped like a woman's shoe! Vilma had passed this way! But--might it not have been some other woman from the _Ariel_? No! They had been carried--and even if they had walked, their feet were
dry! Like a hound on the scent, Cliff Darrell sped along the serpentine
path. The wind moaned above him, and the soughing branches seemed to
whisper croaking warnings, but he ran on, his eyes constantly seeking
signs of Vilma's course. Here a drop of water shaken from her drenched
skirt, there another; and Cliff blessed the full moon whose light made
possible his trailing of the almost invisible spoor. Now he had passed beyond the dead forest and was moving toward the
castle. The trail had been growing steadily fainter, but he managed to
follow it. It led him toward a narrow stone stairway climbing
crookedly to a misshapen opening in the wall. Light glowed faintly
lurid somewhere deep within; and now Cliff heard a blasphemous sound
belch from the depths of the castle--a wheezing, sardonic croaking
like the moan of a demoniac organ, rumbling an obscene dirge. His hair
bristled, and he stopped short. He looked at the steps, searching for the fading trail--and he
stiffened. There on the second step was an irregular blotch of
moisture! What did it mean? Had Vilma crouched there? Had she ascended
those steps? Entered? *       *       *       *       *

With drawn face he began to skirt the base of the black building,
searching every nook and cranny, scanning the bare walls. His heart
lay like ballast in his breast. If--if something had lured Vilma into
that demon-infested vault ... he checked the thought. Suddenly he cursed. Mechanically he had begun to measure his stride in
time with the doleful dirge from the castle. He stalked on with
altered pace. As he rounded the corner at the rear of the structure,
he saw a shadow outlined against the sky, crouching on a ledge below
one of the little windows. He looked again--cried:

"Vilma!" The figure above him stirred, looked down, then climbed hastily
earthward. It was Vilma ... Vilma, with black hair hanging stringily
about her head, face pale, eyes fixed in the wideness of fear ...
Vilma, with her wet clothing clinging to the lovely contours of her
symmetrical body. "Oh, Cliff!" she gasped, a dry sob choking her. "Thank God--thank
God!" She clung to him, her face hidden against his shoulder, quivering
uncontrollably. Then tears came, saving tears, relieving her pent-up
emotions. Cliff said nothing, only held her close, strongly protective. And
gradually he felt the tempest of terror subside. At last she looked
up. Some of the dread had gone from her face, and she tried to smile. "I guess--I can't take it," she said. Cliff shook his head solemnly. "You're a game girl, Vilma! You've
nerve enough for two men. If you can, tell me what happened. Or if
you'd rather let it wait, just say so." "I'll feel better if I get it off my chest," she said. "You probably
saw those--things--carry me from the yacht." Cliff nodded. "Well, I
was just about paralyzed when they dropped me in their terrible boat. I remember, you tried to arouse me; then that horn blew, and I just
seemed to float away in an ocean of sleep. "After that I can remember nothing till I awoke with water filling my
eyes and nose and mouth, choking me. Someone's arms were around me--it
must have been you, Cliff--and then they weren't there any more, and I
struggled wildly, out of my wits.