Page:Weird Tales Volume 13 Number 1 (1929-01).djvu/112
opportunity, whirled his own saber upward. Came the resounding clash of steel on steel. There was a ringing clatter as Saranoff’s saber lay on the rock at his feet.
Trask had succeeded!
A shout arose from the crowd. Birsk whirled his weapon high above his head once more, the broad blade cutting a vivid ribbon of light under the yellow rays of the sun. Saranoff, disarmed, awaited the blow, his free hand still clasping his wounded shoulder. “This is the end,” thought Hearne.
The grand duchess screamed. Birsk whirled his blade still higher and higher and stepped back for a better blow. But that foot, coming down, found no solid rock beneath it, for this was the edge of the cliff and the Pacific yawned below. Birsk, clutching at empty air, vanished over the side, his one hoarse scream of terror echoing and re-echoing among the cliffs, rooting each of them with horror to the spot.
Two hundred feet with the black points of jagged reefs waiting in assured silence for their prey!
The eery fate that befell Hearne and Mrs. Trask in the bodies
of Boris Saranoff and the Grand Duchess Tatiana
will be told in next month's chapters, which
will bring this story to its end.
10, The Red Specter
There was a red, raw dripping thing that mowed
And tottered in a spreading pool of blood;
There was a shape, on which a scarlet flood
Enwrapped it in a steaming blood-red shroud;
There was a sound, gigantically loud,
That seemed to pour from where the horror stood;
There was a crackle as of blazing wood,
And all the air was misty as a cloud.
And both my hands were covered with that red,
And everything was red and strange and mad;
I scarce could know the evil that I did;
The air from some vast stellar carnage bled
And veiled the shrieking shape in haze that had
Red phantoms in its bleeding mystery hid.