Page:Weird Tales Volume 13 Number 06 (1929-06).djvu/98

"The boat is going over. There will be two of them lowered. You will hear; I have heard every month for fifty years. They are coming to dance their terrible rituals of sacrilege over the grave of Naika so that her soul can have no rest!"

The flesh of my body tightened perceptibly. The sounds were real! I could no longer doubt their reality, try as hard as I might! I heard the splash of lifted oars, the scraping of a boat upon the sand! And nowhere the sight of any moving thing or human figure. Had I seen any tangible substance, a wraith, a moving ghostly figure, it would not have been so terrifying to my spirits, my nerves. But there was nothing except the rattle of phantom chains and the splash of shadowy oars in the surf. It seemed to me that the waves grew larger at the point where I had heard the scraping of a boat's keel along the sand.

"They will roll their casks of rum along the sand," said Sailor Jack.

His voice startled me. I looked at his face. Every muscle was drawn in horror.

"They will stamp their feet upon Naika's grave in a ghost dance. They hate Naika! Naika, whom I loved with all my soul and my heart! Naika comes to my cabin at night and lays her woes at my feet. Her lips touch mine in a kiss that is of her hungry, searching soul!"

His voice grew louder in his wild, demoniacal denunciation of the despoilers of his sweetheart's grave. My mind grew weary with the dreadful thoughts that thronged its avenues. The dance began—smothered voices, the clinking of mugs, the low, shrill laughter of drunken men! Sounds without bodies capable of producing them! It is indescribable!

"Come," said Sailor Jack. "It is time to avenge her desecration! I shall slay the spirit of Beideman, who leads these ghastly revels!"

He sprang with a loud cry from his hiding-place behind the willows and ran, crouching, toward the hull of the boat. The sounds died away! There was none except the soft murmur of the wind in the willows. I sprang behind him, quite confident now that he had gone mad. He was brandishing the simitar at an unseen adversary close to the rotting hull of the boat.

"Die! Ah, die, grave-wreckers! Destroyers of the peace of souls!"

Suddenly he stumbled back into my arms. It was almost as if some tremendous blow had been delivered upon his head. His simitar—rusted, useless thing that it was—fell from his grasp. Sailor Jack was dead.

I bent over him, not daring to move, cold with a sudden fear! The sounds had begun again. I dared not look. The rattling of boat-hooks, the creaking of windlasses, the bellying and the popping of sails—I heard them all and I dared not raise my head. I knelt there in the sand above the grave of Naika and held the poor old body of Sailor Jack in my aims.

I tried later to bring him back to his cabin, but the burden was too great. I set off alone in the darkness then, found my boat, and went to the camp for help. We brought Sailor Jack to Pineville and left his body with the local undertaker. I told no one of the night's affair, except that I was on the beach with the old man when he died. The local doctor pronounced it heart-failure.

The next afternoon I went alone to the beach where the rotting hull still stood half buried in the sand. I found Sailor Jack's simitar and the blue silk sash. I had brought a spade along with me and I began excavating the sand upon the spot where the old man had engaged his ghostly enemy in combat.

I had not to dig long. I came at length upon a sort of white earth, the crumbled remains of human bones, and a little to one side I found a ring—a ruby set about with green stones in a gold band.