Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Weird Tales October 1936. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
"One hand closed on his thin neck, and the other, arock-like fist, made a bloody ruin of his mouth."
Isle of the Undead
By LLOYD ARTHUR ESHBACH
A gripping, thrilling, uncanny tale about the frightfulfate that befell a yachting party on the dreadful island ofliving dead men
1. A Horror from the Past
drab gray sheet of cloud slipped stealthily from the moon's roundface, like a shroud slipping from the face of one long dead, a coldlyphosphorescent face from which the eyes had been plucked. Yellowradiance fell toward a calm, oily sea, seeking a narrow bank of foglying low on the water, penetrating its somber mass like frozen yellowfingers.
Vilma Bradley shuddered and shrank against Clifford Darrell's brawnyform. "It's—it's ghastly, Cliff!" she said.
"Ghastly?" Darrell leaned against the rail, laughing softly. "Onecocktail too many—that's the answer. It's given you the jitters.Listen!" Faintly from the salon came strains of dance music and therhythmic shuffle of feet. "A nifty yacht, a South Sea moon, a radiodance orchestra, dancers—and little Clifford! And you call itghastly!" Almost savagely his arms tightened about her, and thebantering note left his voice. "I'm crazy about you, Vilma."
She tried to laugh, but it was an unconvincing sound. "It's the moon,Cliff—I guess. I never saw it like that before. Something's going tohappen—something dreadful. I just know it!"
"Oh—be sensible, Vilma!" There was a hint of impatience in Cliff'sdeep voice. A gorgeous girl in his arms—dark-haired, dark-eyed, madefor love—and she talked of dreadful things which were going to happenbecause the moon looked screwy.
She released herself and glanced out over the sea. "I know I'm silly,but——" Her voice froze and her slender body stiffened."Cliff—look!"
Darrell spun around, and as he stared, he felt a dryness seeping intohis throat, choking him....
Out of the winding-sheet of fog into the moonlight crept a strange,strange craft, her crumbling timbers blackened and rotted withincredible age. The corpse of a ship, she seemed, resurrected from thegrave of the sea. Her prow thrust upward like a scimitar bentbackward, hovering over the gaunt ruin of a cabin whose seaward sideswere formed by port and starboard bows. From a shallow pit amidshipsjutted the broken arm of a mast, its splintered tip pointing towardthe blindly watching moon. The stern, thickly covered with themoldering encrustations of age, curved inward above the strange highpoop, beneath which lay another cabin. And along either side of herworm-eaten freeboard ran a row of apertures like oblong portholes. Outof these projected great oars, long, unwieldy, as somberly black a