Page:Weird Tales Volume 27 Number 02 (1936-02).djvu/20

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COILS OF THE SILVER SERPENT

147

silver serpent; but slow and sluggish now, because of the huge bulge in its middle.

Barry spun about and dived for the automatic that had clattered, unfired, from Vroom's fingers. He snatched it up and leaped for the deck. Adell joined him in the companionway door, and his left arm circled her shoulders. The logy reptile was slowly crawling across the deck.

The automatic roared. The serpent jerked convulsively as the steel-jacketed bullet bored into its slimy folds.

Again and again Barry fired. Adell shuddered and buried her face on his shoulder as the monster writhed and jerked and twisted itself into knots in its death throes. As he emptied the last shell into its squirming body it slid under the rail and dropped into the water.

"Barry!" Adell was clinging to him. quivering with fright. "It's been so horrible—so terrible! You saved me from the most awful———"

"Forget it!" advised Barry as he drew her closer to him. Over her shoulder, he could see the interior of the cabin, and all that was left of the pot-bellied zoologist—a high-heeled shoe, fallen from his foot as he had vanished down the serpent's maw.

Ballad of the Gods
By HENRY KUTTNER

Donal has turned from his father's god, and worships the fish-god Vake,
And he spills the blood of his sacrifice to the god of the Bottomless Lake.
He thinks that once more the deer and fish will die by his spear and his rod;
And he is a fool, for Jubbudar-Thool is a great and a jealous god.

Jubbudar-Thool is his father's god, and a mighty god is he;
His head is carved from a weathered rock, and his trunk was the trunk of a tree;
His head is carved from an ancient rock where a gaping mouth is cut:
And Jubbudar-Thool with his mouth a-drool has stalked from the temple hut!

Donal has called on the fish-god Vake, but the drowsy fish-god nods;
For why should the life of a man cause strife in the brotherhood of the gods?
And Donal's stare was a frozen glare, and his mouth was a fear-fixed grin
When the hut-wall buckled beneath a blow and his father's god came in!

A man may live in the blackest sin, and live to a ripe old age;
He may sin with the wife of another man and escape the avenger's rage;
He may take two wives and a hundred lives, and live by deceits and frauds
Till the day he dies: but if he is wise he will worship his father's gods.