Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 6 (1925-12).djvu/86

Bedlam ceased as suddenly as it began, and the cloud rolled out to sea. There we stood, soaked, and shivering with fear, as we watched the storm move against our ship. We strained our eyes but the ship was gone. She had fled to refuge and left us stranded on this island of the rotting dead. Why? I do not know, my friend, but she left us.

I glanced at the coffin. It was filled with water. I soon discovered that the flood had made a veritable mush of the cinder and ashes and from this knew that we could never bear the coffin back to the beach. An idea suddenly occurred to me and I adopted it immediately.

I fished among the ghastly contents of the coffin, took out some of the larger bones and put them in my knapsack.

"Forward, march!" I commanded, and we struck out through the mire and slush toward the beach. White bones, washed clean of the ashes, lay on every side. Did mortal eyes ever look on scene so desolate before?

When we arrived at the docks our boat was gone. Its fate and that of our two comrades are written on the scroll of the mysteries of the deep.

All through that terrible afternoon, I stood and searched the great heaving bosom of the Caribbean for sight of the cruiser, but in vain.

With our spades and shovels we cleared a space of some twenty feet square, for I wished again to stand on solid earth. There we stood and stared seaward till the dark shades of night descended upon the noisome scene. I prayed for the blackness of Egyptian night to blot out the sight of those tottering, white ruins.

A great red and sorrowful moon, rising over the benighted city, cast its weird beams over the heaps of silent dead and the bleak, white ruins of the crumbling cathedrals.

I could never explain, my friend, the feelings that came over me as I heard from far up in the city the measured toll of a church bell. You will say it was the result of my nervous condition, and the horrors I had seen that day. No. The sound of that church bell was registered as plainly on my ear-drum as the chug of the engine I now hear below. My comrades sat hunched there in the pale light, put their fingers in their ears, but uttered no syllable. I saw very plainly that no church tower was standing, but I could hear at regular intervals the measured toll. I did not then know as I do now, that there was but one survivor of the dread catastrophe and he a helpless prisoner, deep down in a dark vault, beneath tons of wreckage and cinder; but I do know that all through that horrible night, the church bell tolled the passing of the dead just as one may hear it any day when the coffin is carried from the hearse. Who tolled that bell? I do not know.

It was 3 o'clock in the morning and my eyes felt like chunks of hot metal. It is the time when parties break up, the time when revelers go home, I thought.

Though the streets were blocked with wreckage, though soft mire lay knee-deep on the pavements, I heard the footfalls of a horse, sharp and clear. They drew nearer and nearer.

"Do you hear anything?" I whispered to my comrades.

No answer came.

From behind a white and crumbling column a half block away I saw a coach appear in the moonlight. It took a course which would cause it to pass close to us. My body felt chill and I was trembling, not with fright, my friend, but from standing in the awe-inspiring presence of the unknown, the unexplainable. Onward it came and the horse's footfalls were sharp and clear as if they fell on bare and solid marble. The