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Title: The Pool Of The Black One Author: Robert E. Howard * A ProjectGutenberg of Australia eBook * eBook No.: 0600951h.html Edition: 1 Language:English Character set encoding: Latin-1(ISO-8859-1)--8 bit Date first posted:May 2006 Date most recently updated: May 2006 This eBook was produced by:Richard Scott and Colin Choat Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks arecreated from printed editions which are in the public domain in Australia,unless a copyright notice is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliancewith a particular paper edition. Copyright laws are changing all over theworld. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloadingor redistributing this file. This eBook is made available at no cost and withalmost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use itunder the terms of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may beviewed online at http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html To contact ProjectGutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.au

THE POOL OF THE BLACK ONE

By

Robert E. Howard

Into the west, unknown of man,Ships have sailed since the world began. Read, if you dare, what Skelos wrote,With dead hands fumbling his silken coat;And follow the ships through the wind-blown wrackFollow the ships that come not back.

Sancha, once of Kordava, yawned daintily, stretched her supple limbs luxuriously, and composed herselfmore comfortably on the ermine-fringed silk spread on the carack's poop-deck. That the crew watchedher with burning interest from waist and forecastle she was lazily aware, just as she was also aware thather short silk kirtle veiled little of her voluptuous contours from their eager eyes. Wherefore she smiledinsolently and prepared to snatch a few more winks before the sun, which was just thrusting his goldendisk above the ocean, should dazzle her eyes.

But at that instant a sound reached her ears unlike the creaking of timbers, thrum of cordage and lap ofwaves. She sat up, her gaze fixed on the rail, over which, to her amazement, a dripping figure clambered.Her dark eyes opened wide, her red lips parted in an O of surprize. The intruder was a stranger to her.Water ran in rivulets from his great shoulders and down his heavy arms. His single garment--a pair ofbright crimson silk breeks--was soaking wet, as was his broad gold-buckled girdle and the sheathedsword it supported. As he stood at the rail, the rising sun etched him like a great bronze statue. He ran hisfingers through his streaming black mane, and his blue eyes lit as they rested on the girl.

"Who are you?" she demanded. "Whence did you come?"

He made a gesture toward the sea that took in a whole quarter of the compass, while his eyes did not

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leave her supple figure.

"Are you a merman, that you rise up out of the sea?" she asked, confused by the candor of his gaze,though she was accustomed to admiration.

Before he could reply, a quick step sounded on the boards, and the master of the carack was glaring atthe stranger, fingers twitching at sword-hilt.

"Who the devil are you, sirrah?" this one demanded in no friendly tone.

"I am Conan," the other answered imperturbably. Sancha pricked up her ears anew; she had neverheard Zingaran spoken with such an accent as the stranger spoke it.

"And how did you get aboard my ship?" The voice grated with suspicion.

"I swam."

"Swam!" exclaimed the master angrily. "Dog, would you jest with me? We are far beyond sight of land.Whence do you come?"

Conan pointed with a muscular brown arm toward the east, banded in dazzling gold by the lifting sun.

"I came from the Islands."

"Oh!" The other regarded him with increased interest. Black brows drew down over scowling eyes, andthe thin lip lifted unpleasantly.

"So you are one of those dogs of the Barachans."

A faint smile touched Conan's lips.

"And do you know who I am?" his questioner demanded.

"This ship is the Wastrel; so you must be Zaporavo."

"Aye!" It touched the captain's grim vanity that the man should know him. He was a tall man, tall asConan, though of leaner build. Framed in his steel morion his face was dark, saturnine and hawk-like,wherefore men called him the Hawk. His armor and garments were rich and ornate, after the fashion of aZingaran grandee. His hand was never far from his sword-hilt.

There was little favor in the gaze he bent on Conan. Little love was lost between Zingaran renegades andthe outlaws who infested the Baracha Islands off the southern coast of Zingara. These men were mostlysailors from Argos, with a sprinkling of other nationalities. They raided the shipping, and harried theZingaran coast towns, just as the Zingaran buccaneers did, but these dignified their profession by callingthemselves Freebooters, while they dubbed the Barachans pirates. They were neither the first nor the lastto gild the name of thief.

Some of these thoughts passed through Zaporavo's mind as he toyed with his sword-hilt and scowled athis uninvited guest. Conan gave no hint of what his own thoughts might be. He stood with folded arms asplacidly as if upon his own deck; his lips smiled and his eyes were untroubled.

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"What are you doing here?" the Freebooter demanded abruptly.

"I found it necessary to leave the rendezvous at Tortage before moonrise last night," answered Conan. "Ideparted in a leaky boat, and rowed and bailed all night. Just at dawn I saw your topsails, and left themiserable tub to sink, while I made better speed in the water."

"There are sharks in these waters," growled Zaporavo, and was vaguely irritated by the answering shrugof the mighty shoulders. A glance toward the waist showed a screen of eager faces staring upward. Aword would send them leaping up on the poop in a storm of swords that would overwhelm even such afightingman as the stranger looked to be.

"Why should I burden myself with every nameless vagabond that the sea casts up?" snarled Zaporavo,his look and manner more insulting than his words.

"A ship can always use another good sailor," answered the other without resentment. Zaporavoscowled, knowing the truth of that assertion. He hesitated, and doing so, lost his ship, his command, hisgirl, and his life. But of course he could not see into the future, and to him Conan was only anotherwastrel, cast up, as he put it, by the sea. He did not like the man; yet the fellow had given him noprovocation. His manner was not insolent, though rather more confident than Zaporavo liked to see.

"You'll work for your keep," snarled the Hawk. "Get off the poop. And remember, the only law here ismy will."

The smile seemed to broaden on Conan's thin lips. Without hesitation but without haste he turned anddescended into the waist. He did not look again at Sancha, who, during the brief conversation, hadwatched eagerly, all eyes and ears.

As he came into the waist the crew thronged about him Zingarans, all of them, half naked, their gaudysilk garments splashed with tar, jewels glinting in ear-rings and dagger-hilts. They were eager for thetime-honored sport of baiting the stranger. Here he would be tested, and his future status in the crewdecided. Up on the poop Zaporavo had apparently already forgotten the stranger's existence, but Sanchawatched, tense with interest. She had become familiar with such scenes, and knew the baiting would bebrutal and probably bloody.

But her familiarity with such matters was scanty compared to that of Conan. He smiled faintly as hecame into the waist and saw the menacing figures pressing truculently about him. He paused and eyed thering inscrutably, his composure unshaken. There was a certain code about these things. If he hadattacked the captain, the whole crew would have been at his throat, but they would give him a fair chanceagainst the one selected to push the brawl.

The man chosen for this duty thrust himself forward--a wiry brute, with a crimson sash knotted about hishead like a turban. His lean chin jutted out, his scarred face was evil beyond belief. Every glance, eachswaggering movement was an affront. His way of beginning the baiting was as primitive, raw and crudeas himself.

"Baracha, eh?" he sneered. "That's where they raise dogs for men. We of the Fellowship spit on'em--like this!"

He spat in Conan's face and snatched at his own sword.

The Barachan's movement was too quick for the eye to follow. His sledge-like fist crunched with a

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terrible impact against his tormentor's jaw, and the Zingaran catapulted through the air and fell in acrumpled heap by the rail.

Conan turned towards the others. But for a slumbering glitter in his eyes, his bearing was unchanged. Butthe baiting was over as suddenly as it had begun. The seamen lifted their companion; his broken jaw hungslack, his head lolled unnaturally.

"By Mitra, his neck's broken!" swore a black-bearded searogue.

"You Freebooters are a weak-boned race," laughed the pirate. "On the Barachas we take no account ofsuch taps as that. Will you play at sword-strokes, now, any of you? No? Then all's well, and we'refriends, eh?"

There were plenty of tongues to assure him that he spoke truth. Brawny arms swung the dead man overthe rail, and a dozen fins cut the water as he sank. Conan laughed and spread his mighty arms as a greatcat might stretch itself, and his gaze sought the deck above. Sancha leaned over the rail, red lips parted,dark eyes aglow with interest. The sun behind her outlined her lithe figure through the light kirtle which itsglow made transparent. Then across her fell Zaporavo's scowling shadow and a heavy hand fellpossessively on her slim shoulder. There were menace and meaning in the glare he bent on the man in thewaist; Conan grinned back, as if at a jest none knew but himself.

Zaporavo made the mistake so many autocrats make; alone in somber grandeur on the poop, heunderestimated the man below him. He had his opportunity to kill Conan, and he let it pass, engrossed inhis own gloomy ruminations. He did not find it easy to think any of the dogs beneath his feet constituted amenace to him. He had stood in the high places so long, and had ground so many foes underfoot, that heunconsciously assumed himself to be above the machinations of inferior rivals.

Conan, indeed, gave him no provocation. He mixed with the crew, lived and made merry as they did.He proved himself a skilled sailor, and by far the strongest man any of them had seen. He did the work ofthree men, and was always first to spring to any heavy or dangerous task. His mates began to rely uponhim. He did not quarrel with them, and they were careful not to quarrel with him. He gambled with them,putting up his girdle and sheath for a stake, won their money and weapons, and gave them back with alaugh. The crew instinctively looked toward him as the leader of the forecastle. He vouchsafed noinformation as to what had caused him to flee the Barachas, but the knowledge that he was capable of adeed bloody enough to have exiled him from that wild band increased the respect felt toward him by thefierce Freebooters. Toward Zaporavo and the mates he was imperturbably courteous, never insolent orservile.

The dullest was struck by the contrast between the harsh, taciturn, gloomy commander, and the piratewhose laugh was gusty and ready, who roared ribald songs in a dozen languages, guzzled ale like a toper,and--apparently--had no thought for the morrow.

Had Zaporavo known he was being compared, even though unconsciously, with a man before the mast,he would have been speechless with amazed anger. But he was engrossed with his broodings, which hadbecome blacker and grimmer as the years crawled by, and with his vague grandiose dreams; and with thegirl whose possession was a bitter pleasure, just as all his pleasures were.

And she looked more and more at the black-maned giant who towered among his mates at work orplay. He never spoke to her, but there was no mistaking the candor of his gaze. She did not mistake it,and she wondered if she dared the perilous game of leading him on.

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No great length of time lay between her and the palaces of Kordava, but it was as if a world of changeseparated her from the life she had lived before Zaporavo tore her screaming from the flaming caravel hiswolves had plundered. She, who had been the spoiled and petted daughter of the Duke of Kordava,learned what it was to be a buccaneer's plaything, and because she was supple enough to bend withoutbreaking, she lived where other women had died, and because she was young and vibrant with life, shecame to find pleasure in the existence.

The life was uncertain, dream-like, with sharp contrasts of battle, pillage, murder, and flight. Zaporavo'sred visions made it even more uncertain than that of the average Freebooter. No one knew what heplanned next. Now they had left all charted coasts behind and were plunging further and further into thatunknown billowy waste ordinarily shunned by seafarers, and into which, since the beginnings of Time,ships had ventured, only to vanish from the sight of man for ever. All known lands lay behind them, andday upon day the blue surging immensity lay empty to their sight. Here there was no loot--no towns tosack nor ships to burn. The men murmured, though they did not let their murmurings reach the ears oftheir implacable master, who tramped the poop day and night in gloomy majesty, or pored over ancientcharts and time-yellowed maps, reading in tomes that were crumbling masses of worm-eaten parchment.At times he talked to Sancha, wildly it seemed to her, of lost continents, and fabulous isles dreamingunguessed amidst the blue foam of nameless gulfs, where horned dragons guarded treasures gathered bypre-human kings, long, long ago.

Sancha listened, uncomprehending, hugging her slim knees, her thoughts constantly roving away from thewords of her grim companion back to a clean-limbed bronze giant whose laughter was gusty andelemental as the sea wind.

So, after many weary weeks, they raised land to westward, and at dawn dropped anchor in a shallowbay, and saw a beach which was like a white band bordering an expanse of gently grassy slopes, maskedby green trees. The wind brought scents of fresh vegetation and spices, and Sancha clapped her handswith glee at the prospect of adventuring ashore. But her eagerness turned to sulkiness when Zaporavoordered her to remain aboard until he sent for her. He never gave any explanation for his commands; soshe never knew his reason, unless it was the lurking devil in him that frequently made him hurt her withoutcause.

So she lounged sulkily on the poop and watched the men row ashore through the calm water thatsparkled like liquid jade in the morning sunlight. She saw them bunch together on the sands, suspicious,weapons ready, while several scattered out through the trees that fringed the beach. Among these, shenoted, was Conan. There was no mistaking that tall brown figure with its springy step. Men said he wasno civilized man at all, but a Cimmerian, one of those barbaric tribesmen who dwelt in the gray hills of thefar North, and whose raids struck terror in their southern neighbors. At least, she knew that there wassomething about him, some super-vitality or barbarism that set him apart from his wild mates.

Voices echoed along the shore, as the silence reassured the buccaneers. The clusters broke up, as menscattered along the beach in search of fruit. She saw them climbing and plucking among the trees, and herpretty mouth watered. She stamped a little foot and swore with a proficiency acquired by associationwith her blasphemous companions.

The men on shore had indeed found fruit, and were gorging on it, finding one unknown golden-skinnedvariety especially luscious. But Zaporavo did not seek or eat fruit. His scouts having found nothingindicating men or beasts in the neighborhood, he stood staring inland, at the long reaches of grassy slopesmelting into one another. Then, with a brief word, he shifted his sword-belt and strode in under the trees.His mate expostulated with him against going alone, and was rewarded by a savage blow in the mouth.Zaporavo had his reasons for wishing to go alone. He desired to learn if this island were indeed that

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mentioned in the mysterious Book of Skelos, whereon, nameless sages aver, strange monsters guardcrypts filled with hieroglyph-careen gold. Nor, for murky reasons of his own, did he wish to share hisknowledge, if it were true, with any one, much less his own crew.

Sancha, watching eagerly from the poop, saw him vanish into the leafy fastness. Presently she sawConan, the Barachan, turn, glance briefly at the men scattered up and down the beach; then the piratewent quickly in the direction taken by Zaporavo, and likewise vanished among the trees.

Sancha's curiosity was piqued. She waited for them to reappear, but they did not. The seamen stillmoved aimlessly up and down the beach, and some had wandered inland. Many had lain down in theshade to sleep. Time passed and she fidgeted about restlessly. The sun began to beat down hotly, in spiteof the canopy above the poop-deck. Here it was warm, silent, draggingly monotonous; a few yards awayacross a band of blue shallow water, the cool shady mystery of tree-fringed beach and woodland-dottedmeadow beckoned her. Moreover, the mystery concerning Zaporavo and Conan tempted her.

She well knew the penalty for disobeying her merciless master, and she sat for some time, squirming withindecision. At last she decided that it was worth even one of Zaporavo's whippings to play truant, andwith no more ado she kicked off her soft leather sandals, slipped out of her kirtle and stood up on thedeck naked as Eve. Clambering over the rail and down the chains, she slid into the water and swamashore. She stood on the beach a few moments, squirming as the sands tickled her small toes, while shelooked for the crew. She saw only a few, at some distance up or down the beach. Many were fastasleep under the trees, bits of golden fruit still clutched in their fingers. She wondered why they shouldsleep so soundly, so early in the day.

None hailed her as she crossed the white girdle of sand and entered the shade of the woodland. Thetrees, she found, grew in irregular clusters, and between these groves stretched rolling expanses ofmeadow-like slopes. As she progressed inland, in the direction taken by Zaporavo, she was entrancedby the green vistas that unfolded gently before her, soft slope beyond slope, carpeted with green swardand dotted with groves. Between the slopes lay gentle declivities, likewise swarded. The scenery seemedto melt into itself, or each scene into the other; the view was singular, at once broad and restricted. Overall a dreamy silence lay like an enchantment.

Then she came suddenly onto the level summit of a slope, circled with tall trees, and the dreamilyfaery-like sensation vanished abruptly at the sight of what lay on the reddened and trampled grass.Sancha involuntarily cried out and recoiled, then stole forward, wide-eyed, trembling in every limb.

It was Zaporavo who lay there on the sward, staring sightlessly upward, a gaping wound in his breast.His sword lay near his nerveless hand. The Hawk had made his last swoop.

It is not to be said that Sancha gazed on the corpse of her lord without emotion. She had no cause tolove him, yet she felt at least the sensation any girl might feel when looking on the body of the man whowas first to possess her. She did not weep or feel any need of weeping, but she was seized by a strongtrembling, her blood seemed to congeal briefly, and she resisted a wave of hysteria.

She looked about her for the man she expected to see. Nothing met her eyes but the ring of tall, thicklyleafed forest giants, and the blue slopes beyond them. Had the Freebooter's slayer dragged himself away,mortally wounded? No bloody tracks led away from the body.

Puzzled, she swept the surrounding trees, stiffening as she caught a rustle in the emerald leaves thatseemed not to be of the wind. She went toward the trees, staring into the leafy depths.

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"Conan?" Her call was inquiring; her voice sounded strange and small in the vastness of silence that hadgrown suddenly tense.

Her knees began to tremble as a nameless panic swept over her.

"Conan!" she cried desperately. "It is I--Sancha! Where are you? Please, Conan--" Her voice falteredaway. Unbelieving horror dilated her brown eyes. Her red lips parted to an inarticulate scream. Paralysisgripped her limbs; where she had such desperate need of swift flight, she could not move. She could onlyshriek wordlessly.

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When Conan saw Zaporavo stalk alone into the woodland, he felt that the chance he had watched forhad come. He had eaten no fruit, nor joined in the horse-play of his mates; all his faculties were occupiedwith watching the buccaneer chief. Accustomed to Zaporavo's moods, his men were not particularlysurprized that their captain should choose to explore an unknown and probably hostile isle alone. Theyturned to their own amusement, and did not notice Conan when he glided like a stalking panther after thechieftain.

Conan did not underrate his dominance of the crew. But he had not gained the right, through battle andforay, to challenge the captain to a duel to the death. In these empty seas there had been no opportunityfor him to prove himself according to Freebooter law. The crew would stand solidly against him if heattacked the chieftain openly. But he knew that if he killed Zaporavo without their knowledge, theleaderless crew would not be likely to be swayed by loyalty to a dead man. In such wolf-packs only theliving counted.

So he followed Zaporavo with sword in hand and eagerness in his heart, until he came out onto a levelsummit, circled with tall trees, between whose trunks he saw the green vistas of the slopes melting intothe blue distance. In the midst of the glade Zaporavo, sensing pursuit, turned, hand on hilt.

The buccaneer swore.

"Dog, why do you follow me?"

"Are you mad, to ask?" laughed Conan, coming swiftly toward his erstwhile chief. His lips smiled, and inhis blue eyes danced a wild gleam.

Zaporavo ripped out his sword with a black curse, and steel clashed against steel as the Barachan camein recklessly and wide open, his blade singing a wheel of blue flame about his head.

Zaporavo was the veteran of a thousand fights by sea and by land. There was no man in the world moredeeply and thoroughly versed than he in the lore of swordcraft. But he had never been pitted against ablade wielded by thews bred in the wild lands beyond the borders of civilization. Against his fighting-craftwas matched blinding speed and strength impossible to a civilized man. Conan's manner of fighting wasunorthodox, but instinctive and natural as that of a timber wolf. The intricacies of the sword were asuseless against his primitive fury as a human boxer's skill against the onslaughts of a panther.

Fighting as he had never fought before, straining every last ounce of effort to parry the blade thatflickered like lightning about his head, Zaporavo in desperation caught a full stroke near his hilt, and felthis whole arm go numb beneath the terrific impact. That stroke was instantly followed by a thrust withsuch terrible drive behind it that the sharp point ripped through chain-mail and ribs like paper, to transfix

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the heart beneath. Zaporavo's lips writhed in brief agony, but, grim to the last, he made no sound. Hewas dead before his body relaxed on the trampled grass, where blood drops glittered like spilt rubies inthe sun.

Conan shook the red drops from his sword, grinned with unaffected pleasure, stretched like a hugecat--and abruptly stiffened, the expression of satisfaction on his face being replaced by a stare ofbewilderment. He stood like a statue, his sword trailing in his hand.

As he lifted his eyes from his vanquished foe, they had absently rested on the surrounding trees, and thevistas beyond. And he had seen a fantastic thing--a thing incredible and inexplicable. Over the softrounded green shoulder of a distant slope had loped a tall black naked figure, bearing on its shoulder anequally naked white form. The apparition vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving the watchergasping in surprize.

The pirate stared about him, glanced uncertainly back the way he had come, and swore. He wasnonplussed--a bit upset, if the term might be applied to one of such steely nerves as his. In the midst ofrealistic, if exotic surroundings, a vagrant image of fantasy and nightmare had been introduced. Conandoubted neither his eyesight nor his sanity. He had seen something alien and uncanny, he knew; the merefact of a black figure racing across the landscape carrying a white captive was bizarre enough, but thisblack figure had been unnaturally tall.

Shaking his head doubtfully, Conan started off in the direction in which he had seen the thing. He did notargue the wisdom of his move; with his curiosity so piqued, he had no choice but to follow its promptings.

Slope after slope he traversed, each with its even sward and clustered groves. The general trend wasalways upward, though he ascended and descended the gentle inclines with monotonous regularity. Thearray of rounded shoulders and shallow declivities was bewildering and apparently endless. But at last headvanced up what he believed was the highest summit on the island, and halted at the sight of greenshining walls and towers, which, until he had reached the spot on which he then stood, had merged soperfectly with the green landscape as to be invisible, even to his keen sight.

He hesitated, fingered his sword, then went forward, bitten by the worm of curiosity. He saw no one ashe approached a tall archway in the curving wall. There was no door. Peering warily through, he sawwhat seemed to be a broad open court, grass-carpeted, surrounded by a circular wall of the greensemitranslucent substance. Various arches opened from it. Advancing on the balls of his bare feet, swordready, he chose one of these arches at random, and passed into another similar court. Over an inner wallhe saw the pinnacles of strangely shaped towerlike structures. One of these towers was built in, orprojected into the court in which he found himself, and a broad stair led up to it, along the side of thewall. Up this he went, wondering if it were all real, or if he were not in the midst of a black lotus dream.

At the head of the stair he found himself on a walled ledge, or balcony, he was not sure which. He couldnow make out more details of the towers, but they were meaningless to him. He realized uneasily that noordinary human beings could have built them. There was symmetry about their architecture, and system,but it was a mad symmetry, a system alien to human sanity. As for the plan of the whole town, castle, orwhatever it was intended for, he could see just enough to get the impression of a great number of courts,mostly circular, each surrounded by its own wall, and connected with the others by open arches, and all,apparently, grouped about the cluster of fantastic towers in the center.

Turning in the other direction from these towers, he got a fearful shock, and crouched down suddenlybehind the parapet of the balcony, glaring amazedly.

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The balcony or ledge was higher than the opposite wall, and he was looking over that wall into anotherswarded court. The inner curve of the further wall of that court differed from the others he had seen, inthat, instead of being smooth, it seemed to be banded with long lines or ledges, crowded with smallobjects the nature of which he could not determine.

However, he gave little heed to the wall at the time. His attention was centered on the band of beingsthat squatted about a dark green pool in the midst of the court. These creatures were black and naked,made like men, but the least of them, standing upright, would have towered head and shoulders abovethe tall pirate. They were rangy rather than massive, but were finely formed, with no suggestion ofdeformity or abnomality, save as their great height was abnormal. But even at that distance Conan sensedthe basic diabolism of their features.

In their midst, cringing and naked, stood a youth that Conan recognized as the youngest sailor aboardthe Wastrel. He, then, had been the captive the pirate had seen borne across the grass-covered slope.Conan had heard no sound of fighting--saw no blood-stains or wounds on the sleek ebon limbs of thegiants. Evidently the lad had wandered inland away from his companions and been snatched up by ablack man lurking in ambush. Conan mentally termed the creatures black men, for lack of a better term;instinctively he knew that these tall ebony beings were not men, as he understood the term.

No sound came to him. The blacks nodded and gestured to one another, but they did not seem tospeak--vocally, at least. One, squatting on his haunches before the cringing boy, held a pipe-like thing inhis hand. This he set to his lips, and apparently blew, though Conan heard no sound. But the Zingaranyouth heard or felt, and cringed. He quivered and writhed as if in agony; a regularity became evident inthe twitching of his limbs, which quickly became rhythmic. The twitching became a violent jerking, thejerking regular movements. The youth began to dance, as cobras dance by compulsion to the tune of thefaquir's fife. There was naught of zest or joyful abandon in that dance. There was, indeed, abandon thatwas awful to see, but it was not joyful. It was as if the mute tune of the pipes grasped the boy's inmostsoul with salacious fingers and with brutal torture wrung from it every involuntary expression of secretpassion. It was a convulsion of obscenity, a spasm of lasciviousness--an exudation of secret hungersframed by compulsion: desire without pleasure, pain mated awfully to lust. It was like watching a soulstripped naked, and all its dark and unmentionable secrets laid bare.

Conan glared frozen with repulsion and shaken with nausea. Himself as cleanly elemental as a timberwolf, he was yet not ignorant of the perverse secrets of rotting civilizations. He had roamed the cities ofZamora, and known the women of Shadizar the Wicked. But he sensed here a cosmic vilenesstranscending mere human degeneracy--a perverse branch on the tree of Life, developed along linesoutside human comprehension. It was not at the agonized contortions and posturing of the wretched boythat he was shocked, but at the cosmic obscenity of these beings which could drag to light the abysmalsecrets that sleep in the unfathomed darkness of the human soul, and find pleasure in the brazen flauntingof such things as should not be hinted at, even in restless nightmares.

Suddenly the black torturer laid down the pipes and rose, towering over the writhing white figure.Brutally grasping the boy by neck and haunch, the giant up-ended him and thrust him head-first into thegreen pool. Conan saw the white glimmer of his naked body amid the green water, as the black giantheld his captive deep under the surface. Then there was a restless movement among the other blacks,and Conan ducked quickly below the balcony wall, not daring to raise his head lest he be seen.

After a while his curiosity got the better of him, and he cautiously peered out again. The blacks werefiling out of an archway into another court. One of them was just placing something on a ledge of thefurther wall, and Conan saw it was the one who had tortured the boy. He was taller than the others, andwore a jeweled head-band. Of the Zingaran boy there was no trace. The giant followed his fellows, and

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presently Conan saw them emerge from the archway by which he had gained access to that castle ofhorror, and file away across the green slopes, in the direction from which he had come. They bore noarms, yet he felt that they planned further aggression against the Freebooters.

But before he went to warn the unsuspecting buccaneers, he wished to investigate the fate of the boy.No sound disturbed the quiet. The pirate believed that the towers and courts were deserted save forhimself.

He went swiftly down the stair, crossed the court and passed through an arch into the court the blackshad just quitted. Now he saw the nature of the striated wall. It was banded by narrow ledges, apparentlycut out of the solid stone, and ranged along these ledges or shelves were thousands of tiny figures, mostlygrayish in color. These figures, not much longer than a man's hand, represented men, and so cleverlywere they made that Conan recognized various racial characteristics in the different idols, features typicalof Zingarans, Argoseans, Ophireans and Kushite corsairs. These last were black in color, just as theirmodels were black in reality. Conan was aware of a vague uneasiness as he stared at the dumb sightlessfigures. There was a mimicry of reality about them that was somehow disturbing. He felt of them gingerlyand could not decide of what material they were made. It felt like petrified bone; but he could not imaginepetrified substance being found in the locality in such abundance as to be used so lavishly.

He noticed that the images representing types with which he was familiar were all on the higher ledges.The lower ledges were occupied by figures the features of which were strange to him. They eitherembodied merely the artists' imagination, or typified racial types long vanished and forgotten.

Shaking his head impatiently, Conan turned toward the pool. The circular court offered no place ofconcealment; as the body of the boy was nowhere in sight, it must be lying at the bottom of the pool.

Approaching the placid green disk, he stared into the glimmering surface. It was like looking through athick green glass, unclouded, yet strangely illusory. Of no great dimensions, the pool was round as a well,bordered by a rim of green jade. Looking down he could see the rounded bottom--how far below thesurface he could not decide. But the pool seemed incredibly deep--he was aware of a dizziness as helooked down, much as if he were looking into an abyss. He was puzzled by his ability to see the bottom;but it lay beneath his gaze, impossibly remote, illusive, shadowy, yet visible. At times he thought a faintluminosity was apparent deep in the jade-colored depth, but he could not be sure. Yet he was sure thatthe pool was empty except for the shimmering water.

Then where in the name of Crom was the boy whom he had seen brutally drowned in that pool? Rising,Conan fingered his sword, and gazed around the court again. His gaze focused on a spot on one of thehigher ledges. There he had seen the tall black place something--cold sweat broke suddenly out onConan's brown hide.

Hesitantly, yet as if drawn by a magnet, the pirate approached the shimmering wall. Dazed by asuspicion too monstrous to voice, he glared up at the last figure on that ledge. A horrible familiarity madeitself evident. Stony, immobile, dwarfish, yet unmistakable, the features of the Zingaran boy staredunseeingly at him. Conan recoiled, shaken to his soul's foundations. His sword trailed in his paralyzedhand as he glared, open-mouthed, stunned by the realization which was too abysmal and awful for themind to grasp.

Yet the fact was indisputable; the secret of the dwarfish figures was revealed, though behind that secretlay the darker and more cryptic secret of their being.

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How long Conan stood drowned in dizzy cogitation, he never knew. A voice shook him out of his gaze,a feminine voice that shrieked more and more loudly, as if the owner of the voice were being bornenearer. Conan recognized that voice, and his paralysis vanished instantly.

A quick bound carried him high up on the narrow ledges, where he clung, kicking aside the clusteringimages to obtain room for his feet. Another spring and a scramble, and he was clinging to the rim of thewall, glaring over it. It was an outer wall; he was looking into the green meadow that surrounded thecastle.

Across the grassy level a giant black was striding, carrying a squirming captive under one arm as a manmight carry a rebellious child. It was Sancha, her black hair falling in disheveled rippling waves, her oliveskin contrasting abruptly with the glossy ebony of her captor. He gave no heed to her wrigglings and criesas he made for the outer archway.

As he vanished within, Conan sprang recklessly down the wall and glided into the arch that opened intothe further court. Crouching there, he saw the giant enter the court of the pool, carrying his writhingcaptive. Now he was able to make out the creature's details.

The superb symmetry of body and limbs was more impressive at close range. Under the ebon skin long,rounded muscles rippled, and Conan did not doubt that the monster could rend an ordinary man limbfrom limb. The nails of the fingers provided further weapons, for they were grown like the talons of a wildbeast. The face was a carven ebony mask. The eyes' were tawny, a vibrant gold that glowed andglittered. But the face was inhuman; each line, each feature was stamped with evil--evil transcending themere evil of humanity. The thing was not a human--it could not be; it was a growth of Life from the pits ofblasphemous creation--a perversion of evolutionary development.

The giant cast Sancha down on the sward, where she grovelled, crying with pain and terror. He cast aglance about as if uncertain, and his tawny eyes narrowed as they rested on the images overturned andknocked from the wall. Then he stooped, grasped his captive by her neck and crotch, and strodepurposefully toward the green pool. And Conan glided from his archway, and raced like a wind of deathacross the sward.

The giant wheeled, and his eyes flared as he saw the bronzed avenger rushing toward him. In the instantof surprize his cruel grip relaxed and Sancha wriggled from his hands and fell to the grass. The talonedhands spread and clutched, but Conan ducked beneath their swoop and drove his sword through thegiant's groin. The black went down like a felled tree, gushing blood, and the next instant Conan wasseized in a frantic grasp as Sancha sprang up and threw her arms around him in a frenzy of terror andhysterical relief.

He cursed as he disengaged himself, but his foe was already dead; the tawny eyes were glazed, the longebony limbs had ceased to twitch.

"Oh, Conan," Sancha was sobbing, clinging tenaciously to him, "what will become of us? What are thesemonsters? Oh, surely this is hell and that was the devil-"

"Then hell needs a new devil." The Barachan grinned fiercely. "But how did he get hold of you? Havethey taken the ship?"

"I don't know." She tried to wipe away her tears, fumbled for her skirt, and then remembered that shewore none. "I came ashore. I saw you follow Zaporavo, and I followed you both. I found

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Zaporavo--was--was it you who-"

"Who else?" he grunted. "What then?"

"I saw a movement in the trees," she shuddered. "I thought it was you. I called--then I saw that--thatblack thing squatting like an ape among the branches, leering down at me. It was like a nightmare; Icouldn't run. All I could do was squeal. Then it dropped from the tree and seized me--oh, oh, oh!" Shehid her face in her hands, and was shaken anew at the memory of the horror.

"Well, we've got to get out of here," he growled, catching her wrist. "Come on; we've got to get to thecrew-"

"Most of them were asleep on the beach as I entered the woods," she said.

"Asleep?" he exclaimed profanely. "What in the seven devils of hell's fire and damnation-"

"Listen!" She froze, a white quivering image of fright.

"I heard it!" he snapped. "A moaning cry! Wait!"

He bounded up the ledges again and, glaring over the wall, swore with a concentrated fury that madeeven Sancha gasp. The black men were returning, but they came not alone or empty-handed. Each borea limp human form; some bore two. Their captives were the Freebooters; they hung slackly in theircaptors' arms, and but for an occasional vague movement or twitching, Conan would have believed themdead. They had been disarmed but not stripped; one of the blacks bore their sheathed swords, a greatarmload of bristling steel. From time to time one of the seamen voiced a vague cry, like a drunkard callingout in sottish sleep.

Like a trapped wolf Conan glared about him. Three arches led out of the court of the pool. Through theeastern arch the blacks had left the court, and through it they would presumably return. He had enteredby the southern arch. In the western arch he had hidden, and had not had time to notice what lay beyondit. Regardless of his ignorance of the plan of the castle, he was forced to make his decision promptly.

Springing down the wall, he replaced the images with frantic haste, dragged the corpse of his victim tothe pool and cast it in. It sank instantly and, as he looked, he distinctly saw an appalling contraction--ashrinking, a hardening. He hastily turned away, shuddering. Then he seized his companion's arm and ledher hastily toward the southern archway, while she begged to be told what was happening.

"They've bagged the crew," he answered hastily. "I haven't any plan, but we'll hide somewhere andwatch. If they don't look in the pool, they may not suspect our presence."

"But they'll see the blood on the grass!"

"Maybe they'll think one of their own devils spilled it," he answered. "Anyway, we'll have to take thechance."

They were in the court from which he had watched the torture of the boy, and he led her hastily up thestair that mounted the southern wall, and forced her into a crouching position behind the balustrade of thebalcony; it was poor concealment, but the best they could do.

Scarcely had they settled themselves, when the blacks filed into the court. There was a resounding clash

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at the foot of the stairs, and Conan stiffened, grasping his sword. But the blacks passed through anarchway on the southwestern side, and they heard a series of thuds and groans. The giants were castingtheir victims down on the sward. An hysterical giggle rose to Sancha's lips, and Conan quickly clappedhis hand over her mouth, stifling the sound before it could betray them.

After a while they heard the padding of many feet on the sward below, and then silence reigned. Conanpeered over the wall. The court was empty. The blacks were once more gathered about the pool in theadjoining court, squatting on their haunches. They seemed to pay no heed to the great smears of bloodon the sward and the jade rim of the pool. Evidently blood stains were nothing unusual. Nor were theylooking into the pool. They were engrossed in scone inexplicable conclave of their own; the tall blackwas playing again on his golden pipes, and his companions listened like ebony statues.

Taking Sancha's hand, Conan glided down the stair, stooping so that his head would not be visibleabove the wall. The cringing girl followed perforce, staring fearfully at the arch that let into the court of thepool, but through which, at that angle, neither the pool nor its grim throng were visible. At the foot of thestair lay the swords of the Zingarans. The clash they had heard had been the casting down of thecaptured weapons.

Conan drew Sancha toward the southwestern arch, and they silently crossed the sward and entered thecourt beyond. There the Freebooters lay in careless heaps, mustaches bristling, earrings glinting. Hereand there one stirred or groaned restlessly. Conan bent down to them, and Sancha knelt beside him,leaning forward with her hands on her thighs.

"What is that sweet cloying smell?" she asked nervously. "It's on all their breaths."

"It's that damned fruit they were eating," he answered softly. "I remember the smell of it. It must havebeen like the black lotus, that makes men sleep. By Crom, they are beginning to awake--but they'reunarmed, and I have an idea that those black devils won't wait long before they begin their magic onthem. What chance will the lads have, unarmed and stupid with slumber?"

He brooded for an instant, scowling with the intentness of his thoughts; then seized Sancha's oliveshoulder in a grip that made her wince.

"Listen! I'll draw those black swine into another part of the castle and keep them busy for a while.Meanwhile you shake these fools awake, and bring their swords to them--it's a fighting chance. Can youdo it?"

"I--I--don't know!" she stammered, shaking with terror, and hardly knowing what she was saying.

With a curse, Conan caught her thick tresses near her head and shook her until the walls danced to herdizzy sight.

"You must do it!" he hissed at her. "It's our only chance!"

"I'll do my best!" she gasped, and with a grunt of commendation and an encouraging slap on the backthat nearly knocked her down, he glided away.

A few moments later he was crouching at the arch that opened into the court of the pool, glaring uponhis enemies. They still sat about the pool, but were beginning to show evidences of an evil impatience.From the court where lay the rousing buccaneers he heard their groans growing louder, beginning to bemingled with incoherent curses. He tensed his muscles and sank into a pantherish crouch, breathing easily

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between his teeth.

The jeweled giant rose, taking his pipes from his lips--and at that instant Conan was among the startledblacks with a tigerish bound. And as a tiger leaps and strikes among his prey, Conan leaped and struck:thrice his blade flickered before any could lift a hand in defense; then he bounded from among them andraced across the sward. Behind him sprawled three black figures, their skulls split.

But though the unexpected fury of his surprize had caught the giants off guard, the survivors recoveredquickly enough. They were at his heels as he ran through the western arch, their long legs sweeping themover the ground at headlong speed. However, he felt confident of his ability to outfoot them at will; butthat was not his purpose. He intended leading them on a long chase, in order to give Sancha time torouse and arm the Zingarans.

And as he raced into the court beyond the western arch, he swore. This court differed from the othershe had seen. Instead of being round, it was octagonal, and the arch by which he had entered was the onlyentrance or exit.

Wheeling, he saw that the entire band had followed him in; a group clustered in the arch, and the restspread out in a wide line as they approached. He faced them, backing slowly toward the northern wall.The line bent into a semicircle, spreading out to hem him in. He continued to move backward, but moreand more slowly, noting the spaces widening between the pursuers. They feared lest he should try to dartaround a horn of the crescent, and lengthened their line to prevent it.

He watched with the calm alertness of a wolf, and when he struck it was with the devastatingsuddenness of a thunderbolt--full at the center of the crescent. The giant who barred his way went downcloven to the middle of the breast-bone, and the pirate was outside their closing ring before the blacks toright and left could come to their stricken comrade's aid. The group at the gate prepared to receive hisonslaught, but Conan did not charge them. He had turned and was watching his hunters without apparentemotion, and certainly without fear.

This time they did not spread out in a thin line. They had learned that it was fatal to divide their forcesagainst such an incarnation of clawing, rending fury. They bunched up in a compact mass, and advancedon him without undue haste, maintaining their formation.

Conan knew that if he fell foul of that mass of taloned muscle and bone, there could be but oneculmination. Once let them drag him down among them where they could reach him with their talons anduse their greater body-weight to advantage, even his primitive ferocity would not prevail. He glancedaround the wall and saw a ledge-like projection above a corner on the western side. What it was he didnot know, but it would serve his purpose. He began backing toward that corner, and the giants advancedmore rapidly. They evidently thought that they were herding him into the corner themselves, and Conanfound time to reflect that they probably looked on him as a member of a lower order, mentally inferior tothemselves. So much the better. Nothing is more disastrous than underestimating one's antagonist.

Now he was only a few yards from the wall, and the blacks were closing in rapidly, evidently thinking topin him in the corner before he realized his situation. The group at the gate had deserted their post andwere hastening to join their fellows. The giants half-crouched, eyes blazing like golden hell-fire, teethglistening whitely, taloned hands lifted as if to fend off attack. They expected an abrupt and violent moveon the part of their prey, but when it came, it took them by surprize.

Conan lifted his sword, took a step toward them, then wheeled and raced to the wall. With a fleeting coiland release of steel muscles, he shot high in the air, and his straining arm hooked its fingers over the

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projection. Instantly there was a rending crash and the jutting ledge gave way, precipitating the pirateback into the court.

He hit on his back, which for all its springy sinews would have broken but for the cushioning of thesward, and rebounding like a great cat, he faced his foes. The dancing recklessness was gone from hiseyes. They blazed like blue bale-fire; his mane bristled, his thin lips snarled. In an instant the affair hadchanged from a daring game to a battle of life and death, and Conan's savage nature responded with allthe fury of the wild.

The blacks, halted an instant by the swiftness of the episode, now made to sweep on him and drag himdown. But in that instant a shout broke the stillness. Wheeling, the giants saw a disreputable throngcrowding the arch. The buccaneers weaved drunkenly, they swore incoherently; they were addled andbewildered, but they grasped their swords and advanced with a ferocity not dimmed in the slightest bythe fact that they did not understand what it was all about.

As the blacks glared in amazement, Conan yelled stridently and struck them like a razor-edgedthunderbolt. They fell like ripe grains beneath his blade, and the Zingarans, shouting with muddled fury,ran groggily across the court and fell on their gigantic foes with bloodthirsty zeal. They were still dazed;emerging hazily from drugged slumber, they had felt Sancha frantically shaking them and shoving swordsinto their fists, and had vaguely heard her urging them to some sort of action. They had not understood allshe said, but the sight of strangers, and blood streaming, was enough for them.

In an instant the court was turned into a battle-ground which soon resembled a slaughter-house. TheZingarans weaved and rocked on their feet, but they wielded their swords with power and effect,swearing prodigiously, and quite oblivious to all wounds except those instantly fatal. They faroutnumbered the blacks, but these proved themselves no mean antagonists. Towering above theirassailants, the giants wrought havoc with talons and teeth, tearing out men's throats, and dealing blowswith clenched fists that crushed in skulls. Mixed and mingled in that melee, the buccaneers could not usetheir superior agility to the best advantage, and many were too stupid from their drugged sleep to avoidblows aimed at them. They fought with a blind wild-beast ferocity, too intent on dealing death to evade it.The sound of the hacking swords was like that of butchers' cleavers, and the shrieks, yells and curseswere appalling.

Sancha, shrinking in the archway, was stunned by the noise and fury; she got a dazed impression of awhirling chaos in which steel flashed and hacked, arms tossed, snarling faces appeared and vanished, andstraining bodies collided, rebounded, locked and mingled in a devil's dance of madness.

Details stood out briefly, like black etchings on a background of blood. She saw a Zingaran sailor,blinded by a great flap of scalp torn loose and hanging over his eyes, brace his straddling legs and drivehis sword to the hilt in a black belly. She distinctly heard the buccaneer grunt as he struck, and saw thevictim's tawny eyes roll up in sudden agony; blood and entrails gushed out over the driven blade. Thedying black caught the blade with his naked hands, and the sailor tugged blindly and stupidly; then ablack arm hooked about the Zingaran's head, a black knee was planted with cruel force in the middle ofhis back. His head was jerked back at a terrible angle, and something cracked above the noise of thefray, like the breaking of a thick branch. The conqueror dashed his victim's body to the earth--and as hedid, something like a beam of blue light flashed across his shoulders from behind, from right to left. Hestaggered, his head toppled forward on his breast, and thence, hideously, to the earth.

Sancha turned sick. She gagged and wished to vomit. She made abortive efforts to turn and flee fromthe spectacle, but her legs would not work. Nor could she close her eyes. In fact, she opened themwider. Revolted, repelled, nauseated, yet she felt the awful fascination she had always experienced at

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sight of blood. Yet this battle transcended anything she had ever seen fought out between human beingsin port raids or sea battles. Then she saw Conan.

Separated from his mates by the whole mass of the enemy, Conan had been enveloped in a black waveof arms and bodies, and dragged down. Then they would quickly have stamped the life out of him, but hehad pulled down one of them with him, and the black's body protected that of the pirate beneath him.They kicked and tore at the Barachan and dragged at their writhing comrade, but Conan's teeth were setdesperately in his throat, and the pirate clung tenaciously to his dying shield.

An onslaught of Zingarans caused a slackening of the press, and Conan threw aside the corpse and rose,blood-smeared and terrible. The giants towered above him like great black shadows, clutching, buffetingthe air with terrible blows. But he was as hard to hit or grapple as a blood-mad panther, and at everyturn or flash of his blade, blood jetted. He had already taken punishment enough to kill three ordinarymen, but his bull-like vitality was undiminished.

His war cry rose above the medley of the carnage, and the bewildered but furious Zingarans took freshheart and redoubled their strokes, until the rending of flesh and the crunching of bone beneath the swordsalmost drowned the howls of pain and wrath.

The blacks wavered, and broke for the gate, and Sancha squealed at their coming and scurried out ofthe way. They jammed in the narrow archway, and the Zingarans stabbed and hacked at their strainingbacks with strident yelps of glee. The gate was a shambles before the survivors broke through andscattered, each for himself.

The battle became a chase. Across grassy courts, up shimmering stairs, over the slanting roofs offantastic towers, even along the broad coping of the walls, the giants fled, dripping blood at each step,harried by their merciless pursuers as by wolves. Cornered, some of them turned at bay and men died.But the ultimate result was always the same--a mangled black body twitching on the sward, or hurledwrithing and twisting from parapet or tower roof.

Sancha had taken refuge in the court of the pool, where she crouched, shaking with terror. Outside rosea fierce yelling, feet pounded the sward, and through the arch burst a black, red-stained figure. It was thegiant who wore the gemmed headband. A squat pursuer was close behind, and the black turned, at thevery brink of the pool. In his extremity he had picked up a sword dropped by a dying sailor, and as theZingaran rushed recklessly at him, he struck with the unfamiliar weapon. The buccaneer dropped with hisskull crushed, but so awkwardly the blow was dealt, the blade shivered in the giant's hand.

He hurled the hilt at the figures which thronged the arch, and bounded toward the pool, his face aconvulsed mask of hate.

Conan burst through the men at the gate, and his feet spurned the sward in his headlong charge.

But the giant threw his great arms wide and from his lips rang an inhuman cry--the only sound made by ablack during the entire fight. It screamed to the sky its awful hate; it was like a voice howling from thepits. At the sound the Zingarans faltered and hesitated. But Conan did not pause. Silently andmurderously he drove at the ebon figure poised on the brink of the pool.

But even as his dripping sword gleamed in the air, the black wheeled and bounded high. For a flash ofan instant they saw him poised in midair above the pool; then with an earth-shaking roar, the greenwaters rose and rushed up to meet him, enveloping him in a green volcano.

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Conan checked his headlong rush just in time to keep from toppling into the pool, and he sprang back,thrusting his men behind him with mighty swings of his arms. The green pool was like a geyser now, thenoise rising to deafening volume as the great column of water reared and reared, blossoming at the crestwith a great crown of foam.

Conan was driving his men to the gate, herding them ahead of him, beating them with the flat of hissword; the roar of the water-spout seemed to have robbed them of their faculties. Seeing Sanchastanding paralyzed, staring with wide-eyed terror at the seething pillar, he accosted her with a bellow thatcut through the thunder of the water and made her jump out of her daze. She ran to him, armsoutstretched, and he caught her up under one arm and raced out of the court.

In the court which opened on the outer world, the survivors had gathered, weary, tattered, wounded andblood-stained, and stood gaping dumbly at the great unstable pillar that towered momentarily nearer theblue vault of the sky. Its green trunk was laced with white; its foaming crown was thrice thecircumference of its base. Momentarily it threatened to burst and fall in an engulfing torrent, yet itcontinued to jet skyward.

Conan's eyes swept the bloody, naked group, and he cursed to see only a score. In the stress of themoment he grasped a corsair by the neck and shook him so violently that blood from the man's woundsspattered all near them.

"Where are the rest?" he bellowed in his victim's ear.

"That's all!" the other yelled back, above the roar of the geyser. "The others were all killed by thoseblack-"

"Well, get out of here!" roared Conan, giving him a thrust that sent him staggering headlong toward theouter archway. "That fountain is going to burst in a moment-"

"We'll all be drowned!" squawked a Freebooter, limping toward the arch.

"Drowned, hell!" yelled Conan. "We'll be turned to pieces of petrified bone! Get out, blast you!"

He ran to the outer archway, one eye on the green roaring tower that loomed so awfully above him, theother on stragglers. Dazed with blood-lust, fighting, and the thunderous noise, some of the Zingaransmoved like men in a trance. Conan hurried them up; his method was simple. He grasped loiterers by thescruff of the neck, impelled them violently through the gate, added impetus with a lusty kick in the rear,spicing his urgings for haste with pungent comments on the victim's ancestry. Sancha showed aninclination to remain with him, but he jerked away her twining arms, blaspheming luridly, and acceleratedher movements with a tremendous slap on the posterior that sent her scurrying across the plateau.

Conan did not leave the gate until he was sure all his men who yet lived were out of the castle andstarted across the level meadow. Then he glanced again at the roaring pillar looming against the sky,dwarfing the towers, and he too fled that castle of nameless horrors.

The Zingarans had already crossed the rim of the plateau and were fleeing down the slopes. Sanchawaited for him at the crest of the first slope beyond the rim, and there he paused for an instant to lookback at the castle. It was as if a gigantic green-stemmed and white-blossomed flower swayed above thetowers; the roar filled the sky. Then the jade-green and snowy pillar broke with a noise like the rendingof the skies, and walls and towers were blotted out in a thunderous torrent.

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Conan caught the girl's hand, and fled. Slope after slope rose and fell before them, and behind soundedthe rushing of a river. A glance over his straining shoulder showed a broad green ribbon rising and fallingas it swept over the slopes. The torrent had not spread out and dissipated; like a giant serpent it flowedover the depressions and the rounded crests. It held a consistent course--it was following them.

The realization roused Conan to a greater pitch of endurance. Sancha stumbled and went to her kneeswith a moaning cry of despair and exhaustion. Catching her up, Conan tossed her over his giant shoulderand ran on. His breast heaved, his knees trembled; his breath tore in great gasps through his teeth. Hereeled in his gait. Ahead of him he saw the sailors toiling, spurred on by the terror that gripped them.

The ocean burst suddenly on his view, and in his swimming gaze floated the Wastrel, unharmed. Mentumbled into the boats helter-skelter. Sancha fell into the bottom and lay there in a crumpled heap.Conan, though the blood thundered in his ears and the world swam red to his gaze, took an oar with thepanting sailors.

With hearts ready to burst from exhaustion, they pulled for the ship. The green river burst through thefringe of trees. Those trees fell as if their stems had been cut away, and as they sank into thejade-colored flood, they vanished. The tide flowed out over the beach, lapped at the ocean, and thewaves turned a deeper, more sinister green.

Unreasoning, instinctive fear held the buccaneers, making them urge their agonized bodies and reelingbrains to greater effort; what they feared they knew not, but they did know that in that abominablesmooth green ribbon was a menace to body and to soul. Conan knew, and as he saw the broad line slipinto the waves and stream through the water toward them, without altering its shape or course, he calledup his last ounce of reserve strength so fiercely that the oar snapped in his hands.

But their prows bumped against the timbers of the Wastrel, and the sailors staggered up the chains,leaving the boats to drift as they would. Sancha went up on Conan's broad shoulder, hanging limp as acorpse, to be dumped unceremoniously on to the deck as the Barachan took the wheel, gasping ordersto his skeleton of a crew. Throughout the affair, he had taken the lead without question, and they hadinstinctively followed him. They reeled about like drunken men, fumbling mechanically at ropes andbraces. The anchor chain, unshackled, splashed into the water, the sails unfurled and bellied in a risingwind. The Wastrel quivered and shook herself, and swung majestically seaward. Conan glaredshoreward; like a tongue of emerald flame, a ribbon licked out on the water futilely, an oar's length fromthe Wastrel's keel. It advanced no further. From that end of the tongue, his gaze followed an unbrokenstream of lambent green, across the white beach, and over the slopes, until it faded in the blue distance.

The Barachan, regaining his wind, grinned at the panting crew. Sancha was standing near him, hystericaltears coursing down her cheeks. Conan's breeks hung in blood-stained tatters; his girdle and sheath weregone, his sword, driven upright into the deck beside him, was notched and crusted with red. Bloodthickly clotted his black mane, and one ear had been half torn from his head. His arms, legs, breast andshoulders were bitten and clawed as if by panthers. But he grinned as he braced his powerful legs, andswung on the wheel in sheer exuberance of muscular might.

"What now?" faltered the girl.

"The plunder of the seas!" he laughed. "A paltry crew, and that chewed and clawed to pieces, but theycan work the ship, and crews can always be found. Come here, girl, and give me a kiss."

"A kiss?" she cried hysterically. "You think of kisses at a time like this?"

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His laughter boomed above the snap and thunder of the sails, as he caught her up off her feet in thecrook of one mighty arm, and smacked her red lips with resounding relish.

"I think of Life!" he roared. "The dead are dead, and what has passed is done! I have a ship and afighting crew and a girl with lips like wine, and that's all I ever asked. Lick your wounds, bullies, andbreak out a cask of ale. You're going to work ship as she never was worked before. Dance and singwhile you buckle to it, damn you! To the devil with empty seas! We're bound for waters where theseaports are fat, and the merchant ships are crammed with plunder!"

THE END

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